I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.
I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, little children, because you know the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
Don’t love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love isn’t in him.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv12–15 12 Little children This is still a general declaration,…
12 Little children This is still a general declaration, for he does not address those only of a tender age, but by little children he means men of all ages, as in the first verse, and also hereafter. I say this, because interpreters have incorrectly applied the term to children. But John, when he speaks of children, calls them παιδία, a word expressive of age; but here, as a spiritual father, he calls the old as well as the young, τεκνία He will, indeed, presently address special words to different ages; yet they are mistaken who think that he begins to do so here. But, on the contrary, lest the preceding exhortation should obscure the free remission of sins, he again inculcates the doctrine which peculiarly belongs to faith, in order that the foundation may with certainty be always retained, that salvation is laid up for us in Christ alone.
Holiness of life ought indeed to be urged, the fear of God ought to be carefully enjoined, men ought to be sharply goaded to repentance, newness of life, together with its fruits, ought to be commended; but still we ought ever to take heed, lest the doctrine of faith be smothered, — that doctrine which teaches that Christ is the only author of salvation and of all blessings; on the contrary, such moderation ought to be presented, that faith may ever retain its own primacy. This is the rule prescribed to us by John: having faithfully spoken of good works, lest he should seem to give them more importance than he ought to have done, he carefully calls us back to contemplate the grace of Christ.
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Your sins are forgiven you Without this assurance, religion would not be otherwise than fading and shadowy; nay, they who pass by the free remission of sins, and dwell on other things, build without a foundation. John in the meantime intimates, that nothing is more suitable to stimulate men to fear God than when they are rightly taught what blessing Christ has brought to them, as Paul does, when he beseeches by the bowels of God’s mercies. (Philippians 2:1.)
It hence appears how wicked is the calumny of the Papists, who pretend that the desire of doing what is right is frozen, when that is extolled which alone renders us obedient children to God. For the Apostle takes this as the ground of his exhortation, that we know that God is so benevolent to us as not to impute to us our sins.
For his name’s sake The material cause is mentioned, lest we should seek other means to reconcile us to God. For it would not be sufficient to know that God forgives us our sins, except we came directly to Christ, and to that price which he paid on the cross for us. And this ought the more to be observed, because we see that by the craft of Satan, and by the wicked fictions of men, this way is obstructed; for foolish men attempt to pacify God by various satisfactions, and devise innumerable kinds of expiations for the purpose of redeeming themselves. For as many means of deserving pardon we intrude on God, by so many obstacles are we prevented from approaching him. Hence John, not satisfied with stating simply the doctrine, that God remits to us our sins, expressly adds, that he is propitious to us from a regard to Christ, in order that he might exclude all other reasons. We also, that we may enjoy this blessing, must pass by and forget all other names, and rely only on the name of Christ.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv12–15 He returneth again from sanctification to remission of sins,…
He returneth again from sanctification to remission of sins, because that free reconciliation in Christ is the ground of our salvation, whereupon afterwards sanctification must be built as upon a foundation.
For his own sake: And in that he nameth Christ, he shutteth out all others, whether they be in heaven or earth.
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Therefore I write unto you, because you are of their number whom God hath reconciled to himself.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv12–15 12 I write unto you, little children, because your…
12 I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.
Ver. 12. I write unto you, little children] A Christian hath his degrees of growth; childhood, 1Co 3:1-2; youth or well grown age, when he is past the spoon, as here; old age, Act 21:16.
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Because your sins are forgiven you] Though perhaps you as yet know it not, through weakness of faith and strength of corruption.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv12–15 He here uses an appellation before {1Jo 2:1} applied…
He here uses an appellation before {1Jo 2:1} applied to all in common, being put alone; but being now set in contradistinction to others, must be understood to intend a distinct rank of Christians, viz. those more newly entered into the Christian state; and to them he suggests the free remission of their sins
for his name’s sake, i.e. for his own sake, as the reason why they should, out of ingenuity, and a new, recent sense of God’s mercy towards them, comply with his holy pleasure in the following precept. The remission of their sins being a first and most early privilege with them, that commenced from the beginning of their sincere Christianity, and which was sealed to them in their late baptism, it is the more fitly mentioned to this first rank of Christians.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv12, 15 Observe here, 1. The care which God has taken,…
Observe here, 1. The care which God has taken, not only to have his word preached, but written; I write unto you, partly to supply his ministers’ absence, that their writings might be instead of vocal instructions, partly to perpetuate truth unto posterity, and to transmit divine revelations to future ages.
Observe, 2. The subject or persons whom our apostle writes to; fathers, young men, and children; where, in general the great wisdom of the apostle is to be observed and taken notice of, that he contents not himself with generals, but directs his discourse particularly to old and young; plainly intimating, that none are too young to receive instruction, none are old enough to reject it. And if St. John wrote to persons of all ages and conditions, then the sacred writings are to be read to, and read by, persons of every age and condition soever. And if the Scriptures be perverted by some, that is not a natural effect, but only an accidental consequent of reading the Scriptures. Now, as evil must not be done that good may come of it, so good must not be left undone, though evil come of it.
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Observe, 3. The duty which all sorts of Christians ought to be exhorted and excited to, and that is love; love to God, accompanied with obedience; and love to all Christians, in obedience to the command of God. It belongs to all sorts of Christians, weak and strong; to all ages of men, young and old, children and fathers, to expel the poison of anger and hatred out of their bosoms, and mutually to embrace one another.
Observe, 4. The reasons of our apostle’s writing to all christians in general, and to each age in particular.
Note, 1. The reason assigned for writing to children, 1Jn 2:12 Because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake: therefore ought you mutually to forgive, and cordially to love one another.
Note, 2. The reason assigned for writing to fathers; Because ye have known him that is from the beginning; that is Jesus Christ, who, in respect of his divine nature, had subsistence from the beginning; that is from all eternity. And if so, then our blessed Saviour had a being antecedent to his conception, and before he was born of the virgin Mary; he then began to be man, but he did not then begin to be; for before Abraham was he was; and he prays to his Father, Jos 17:5 to glorify him with the glory which he had with him before the world was.
Mark, It is not said, with the glory which thou preparedst for me in thy decree and purpose before the world was. As the Socinians would have it, but the glory which I had with thee. He that gave being to all things, must have a being before all things.
Note, 3. The reasons assigned for writing to young men, Because ye are strong, and have overcome the wicked one, and the word of God abideth in you.
Here we have observable, 1. The enemy described, Satan, called the wicked one: Not that he was so by creation, but by his apostacy and defection. Because the first in wickedness, because most industriously wicked, and because most obstinate and persevering in wickedness.
2. The conquest ingeminated; Ye have overcome the wicked one.
Mark, he doth not say. You have made a league with him, but overcome him; there is no way to accomodate or compound matters with Satan, no way to deal with him, but by victory; we are said to overcome him, because we are sure to overcome him; resist him, and he will flee; and because we have overcome him in God’s account, and because we have begun to overcome him. Yield to him, and you will find him an imperious tyrant; resist him, and you will find him a timorous coward.
3. The combatants, young men. Youth is the warlike age; young men are fit for action, old men for advice; young ones should begin this spiritual war betimes, possibly they may never live to be old; or if so, victory will be the more difficulty, by how much the longer it is delayed; and God may deny thee that grace which now thou deniest thyself. The proverb says, "A young saint, but an old devil;" but it is very hard for a young devil to become an old saint; whereas a young Christian soldier is most amiable in God’s eye, and most terrible in the devil’s.
4. The aid, helps, and assistants, by which this victory is attained, ye are strong, that is, made partakers of divine strength; ye have your second in the field, the Holy Spirit, you are strong in the Lord, And the word of God abideth in you. By the strength of God, and the abiding of his word and grace in us, we overcome the wicked one, and prevail against him. God’s word is the richest treasury to supply our wants, and the strongest armoury to oppose our enemies. I write unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v12 This new command of holy love, with the incentives…
This new command of holy love, with the incentives thereto, may possibly be directed to the several ranks of disciples that are here accosted. The several graduates in the Christian university, the catholic church, must be sure to preserve the bond of sacred love. Or, there being an important dehortation and dissuasion to follow, without the observance of which vital religion in the love of God and love of the brethren cannot subsist, the apostle may justly seem to preface it with a solemn address to the several forms or orders in the school of Christ: let the infants or minors, the adults, the seniors (or the adepti, the teleioi, the most perfect), in the Christian institution, know that they must not love this world; and so,
I. We have the address itself made to the various forms and ranks in the church of Christ. All Christians are not of the same standing and stature; there are babes in Christ, there are grown men, and old disciples. As these have their peculiar states, so they have their peculiar duties; but there are precepts and a correspondent obedience common to them all, as particularly mutual love and contempt of the world. We see also that wise pastors will judiciously distribute the word of life, and give to the several members of Christ's family their several suitable portions: I write unto you children, fathers, and young men. In this distribution the apostle addresses,
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1. The lowest in the Christian school: I write unto you, little children, Jo1 2:12. There are novices in religion, babes in Christ, those who are learning the rudiments of Christian godliness. The apostle may seem to encourage them by applying to them first; and it may be useful to the greater proficients to hear what is said to their juniors; elements are to be repeated; first principles are the foundation of all. He addresses the children in Christianity upon two accounts: - (1.) Because their sins were forgiven them for his name's sake, Jo1 2:12. The youngest sincere disciple is pardoned; the communion of saints is attended with the forgiveness of sins. Sins are forgiven either for God's name's sake, for the praise of his glory (his glorious perfections displayed in forgiveness), or for Christ's name's sake, upon his score, and upon the account of the redemption that is in him; and those that are forgiven of God are strongly obliged to relinquish this world, which so interferes with the love of God. (2.) Because of their knowledge of God: I write unto you, little children, because you have known the Father, Jo1 2:13. Children are wont to know none so soon as their father. Children in Christianity must and do know God. They shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, Heb 8:11. Children in Christ should know that God is their Father; it is their wisdom. We say, It is a wise child that knows his father. These children cannot but know theirs; they can well be assured by whose power they are regenerated and by whose grace they are adopted. Those that know the Father may well be withdrawn from the love of this world. Then the apostle, proceeds,
2. To those of the highest station and stature, to the seniors in Christianity, to whom he gives an honourable appellation: I write unto you, fathers (Jo1 2:13, Jo1 2:14), unto you, Mnasons, you old disciples, Act 21:16. The apostle immediately passes from the bottom to the top of the school, from the lowest form to the highest, that those in the middle may hear both lessons, may remember what they have learned and perceive what they must come to: I write unto you, fathers. Those that are of longest standing in Christ's school have need of further advice and instruction; the oldest disciple must go to heaven (the university above) with his book, his Bible, in his hand; fathers must be written to, and preached to; none are too old to learn. He writes to them upon the account of their knowledge: I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him that is from the beginning, Jo1 2:13, Jo1 2:14. Old men have knowledge and experience, and expect deference. The apostle is ready to own the knowledge of old Christians, and to congratulate them thereupon. They know the Lord Christ, particularly him that was from the beginning; as Jo1 1:1. As Christ is Alpha and Omega, so he must be the beginning and end of our Christian knowledge. I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, Phi 3:8. Those who know him that was from the beginning, before this world was made, may well be induced thereby to relinquish this world. Then,
3. To the middle age of Christians, to those who are in their bloom and flower: I write unto you, young men, Jo1 2:13, Jo1 2:14. There are the adult in Christ Jesus, those that have arrived at the strength of spirit and sound sense and can discern between good and evil. The apostle applies to them upon these accounts: - (1.) Upon the account of their martial exploits. Dexterous soldiers they are in the camp of Christ: Because you have overcome the wicked one, Jo1 2:13. There is a wicked one that is continually warring against souls, and particularly against the disciples: but those that are well taught in Christ's school can handle their arms and vanquish the evil one; and those that can vanquish him may be called to vanquish the world too, which is so great an instrument for the devil. (2.) Upon the account of their strength, discovered in this their achievement: Because you are strong, and you have overcome the wicked one, Jo1 2:14. Young men are wont to glory in their strength; it will be the glory of youthful persons to be strong in Christ and in his grace; it will be their glory, and it will try their strength, to overcome the devil; if they be not too hard for the devil, he will be too hard for them. Let vigorous Christians show their strength in conquering the world; and the same strength must be exerted in overcoming the world as is employed in overcoming the devil. (3.) Because of their acquaintance with the word of God: And the word of God abideth in you, Jo1 2:14. The word of God must abide in the adult disciples; it is the nutriment and supply of strength to them; it is the weapon by which they overcome the wicked one; the sword of the Spirit, whereby they quench his fiery darts: and those in whom the word of God dwells are well furnished for the conquest of the world.
II. We have the dehortation or dissuasion thus prefaced and introduced, a caution fundamental to vital practical religion: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, Jo1 2:15. Be crucified to the world, be mortified to the things, to the affairs and enticements, of it." The several degrees of Christians should unite in this, in being dead to the world. Were they thus united, they would soon unite upon other accounts: their love should be reserved for God; throw it not away upon the world. Now here we see the reasons of this dissuasion and caution. They are several, and had need to be so; it is hard to dispute or dissuade disciples themselves from the love of the world. These reasons are taken,
1. From the inconsistency of this love with the love of God: If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, Jo1 2:15. The heart of man is narrow, and cannot contain both loves. The world draws down the heart from God; and so the more the love of the world prevails the more the love of God dwindles and decays.
2. From the prohibition of worldly love or lust; it is not ordained of God: It is not of the Father, but is of the world, Jo1 2:16. This love or lust is not appointed of God (he calls us from it), but it intrudes itself from the world; the world is a usurper of our affection. Now here we have the due consideration and notion of the world, according to which it is to be crucified and renounced. The world, physically considered, is good, and is to be admired as the work of God and a glass in which his perfections shine; but it is to be considered in its relation to us now in our corrupted state, and as it works upon our weakness and instigates and inflames our vile affections. There is great affinity and alliance between this world and the flesh, and this world intrudes and encroaches upon the flesh, and thereby makes a party against God. The things of the world therefore are distinguished into three classes, according to the three predominant inclinations of depraved nature; as, (1.) There is the lust of the flesh. The flesh here, being distinguished from the eyes and the life, imports the body. The lust of the flesh is, subjectively, the humour and appetite of indulging fleshly pleasures; and, objectively, all those things that excite and inflame the pleasures of the flesh. This lust is usually called luxury. (2.) There is the lust of the eyes. The eyes are delighted with treasures; riches and rich possessions are craved by an extravagant eye; this is the lust of covetousness. 3. There is the pride of life. A vain mind craves all the grandeur, equipage, and pomp of a vain-glorious life; this is ambition, and thirst after honour and applause. This is, in part, the disease of the ear; it must be flattered with admiration and praise. The objects of these appetites must be abandoned and renounced; as they engage and engross the affection and desire, they are not of the Father, but of the world, Jo1 2:16. The Father disallows them, and the world should keep them to itself. The lust or appetite to these things must be mortified and subdued; and so the indulging of it is not appointed by the Father, but is insinuated by the ensnaring world.
3. From the vain and vanishing state of earthly things and the enjoyment of them. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, Jo1 2:17. The things of the world are fading and dying apace. The lust itself and the pleasure of it wither and decay; desire itself will ere long fail and cease, Ecc 12:5. And what has become of all the pomp and pleasure of all those who now lie mouldering in the grave?
4. From the immortality of the divine lover, the lover of God: But he that doeth the will of God, which must be the character of the lover of God, in opposition to this lover of the world, abideth for ever, Jo1 2:17. The object of his love in opposition to the world that passeth away, abideth for ever; his sacred passion or affection, in opposition to the lust that passeth away, abideth for ever; love shall never fail; and he himself is an heir of immortality and endless life, and shall in time be translated thither.
From the whole of these verses we should observe the purity and spirituality of the apostolical doctrine. The animal life must be subjected to the divine; the body with its affections should be swayed by religion, or the victorious love of God.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–15 I write unto you, little children,.... By whom the…
I write unto you, little children,.... By whom the apostle means in common all the saints he writes to, whom he afterwards distributes into fathers, young men, and little children; for the same word is used here as in Jo1 2:1; and a different one from that which is rendered little children in Jo1 2:13; and besides, the following blessing of pardon of sin is common to all the children of God of different ages: now what the apostle says he writes unto them, intends not the epistle in general, but the new commandment of love in particular; and which he urges and enforces on them all, for this reason,
because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake; these little children had been sinners by nature and practice, and were not now without sin, but they shared in the blessing of the forgiveness of it; which arises from the abundant mercy and rich grace of God, and proceeds on the blood and sacrifice of Christ; and therefore is said to be "for his name's sake"; not for the sake of any merits in men, any services or works of theirs, but for the sake of Christ, his blood, sacrifice and satisfaction; and it reaches to all sins, original and actual, secret and open, past, present, and to come; and here intends the application of it by the Spirit of God, and the reception of it by faith: and which, as it is a reason and argument encouraging love to God, who freely and fully forgives, and to Christ, whose blood was shed for the remission of sin, so to their brethren and fellow Christians; who are equally sharers in the same blessing, and when they should love, because they are loved of God and Christ; and whom they should forgive, because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven them. It may be, they may be called here "little children", with a view to their interest in this blessing of grace. So the Jews say (f), that Saul was called
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""the son of one year in his reign"; Sa1 13:1; because all his iniquities were forgiven him, "as a sucking child" of a year old.''
(f) T. Hieros. Biccurim, fol. 65. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv12–15 I have written to you, beloved children - Thus…
I have written to you, beloved children - Thus St. John bespeaks all to whom he writes. But from the thirteenth to 1 John ii, 13-27 the twenty-seventh verse, he divides them particularly into "fathers," "young men," and "little children." Because your sins are forgiven you - As if he had said, This is the sum of what I have now written. He then proceeds to other things, which are built upon this foundation.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv12–15 Verse 12. I write unto you, little children] τεκνια.…
Verse 12. I write unto you, little children] τεκνια. Beloved children, (1Jo 2:1) those who were probably the apostle's own converts, and members of the Church over which he presided. But it may be applied to young converts in general; those who can call God Abba, Father, by the Holy Spirit: therefore he says of them, that their sins were forgiven them for his name's sake: i.e. on account of Jesus, the Saviour, who had died for them, and was now their Mediator at the right hand of God.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv12–15 1Jn 2:12. I write unto you, little, or beloved,…
1Jn 2:12. I write unto you, little, or beloved, children — Because this appellation is used (1Jn 2:1) to denote Christians of all ages and characters. Beza, and many other critics, suppose that St. John here addresses the whole body of Christ’s disciples, as their common instructer, (see on 1Jn 2:1,) whom he afterward divides into three classes. In support of this opinion, it may be observed, 1st, That the word by which, in the distribution, he expresses young Christians, is παιδια, which properly means young children, and not τεκνια, which, it seems, should be here rendered dear, or beloved children; 2d, That the reason which St. John assigns for writing to those to whom he gives the latter appellation, namely, that their sins were forgiven them, through Christ, is applicable to the whole body of believers; and was a strong reason, for such of them as John addressed, not to love the world, &c.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv12–15 I write unto you, little children - There has…
I write unto you, little children - There has been much difference of opinion among commentators in regard to this verse and the three following verses, on account of their apparent tautology. Even Doddridge supposes that considerable error has here crept into the text, and that a portion of these verses should be omitted in order to avoid the repetition. But there is no authority for omitting any portion of the text, and the passage is very much in accordance with the general style of the apostle John. The author of this Epistle was evidently accustomed to express his thoughts in a great variety of ways, having even the appearance of tautology, that the exact idea might be before his readers, and that his meaning might not be misapprehended. In order to show that the truths which he was uttering in this Epistle pertained to all, and to secure the interest of all in them, he addresses himself to different classes, and says that there were reasons existing in regard to each class why he wrote to them.
In the expressions “I write,” and “I have written,” he refers to what is found in the Epistle itself, and the statements in these verses are designed to be “reasons” why he brought these truths before their minds. The word here rendered “little children” (τεκνία teknia) is different from that used in 1Jo 2:13, and rendered there “little children,” (παιδία paidia;) but there can be little doubt that the same class of persons is intended. Some have indeed supposed that by the term “little children” here, as in 1Jo 2:1, the apostle means to address all believers - speaking to them as a father; but it seems more appropriate to suppose that he means in these verses to divide the body of Christians whom he addressed into three classes - children, young men, and the aged, and to state particular reasons why he wrote to each. If the term (τεκνία teknia) “little children” here means the same as the term (παιδία paidia) “little children” in 1Jo 2:13, then he addresses each of these classes twice in these two verses, giving each time somewhat varied reasons why he addressed them. That, by the term “little children” here, he means children literally, seems to me to be clear,
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(1) Because this is the usual meaning of the word, and should be understood to be the meaning here, unless there is something in the connection to show that it is used in a metaphorical sense;
(2) Because it seems necessary to understand the other expressions, “young men,” and “fathers,” in a literal sense, as denoting those more advanced in life;
(3) Because this would be quite in character for the apostle John. He had recorded, and would doubtless remember the solemn injunction of the Saviour to Peter Joh 21:15, to “feed his lambs,” and the aged apostle could not but feel that what was worthy of so solemn an injunction from the Lord, was worthy of his attention and care as an apostle; and,
(4) Because in that case, each class, fathers, young men, and children, would be twice addressed in these two verses; whereas if we understood this of Christians in general, then fathers and young men would be twice addressed, and children but once.
If this is so, it may be remarked:
(1) That there were probably quite young children in the church in the time of the apostle John, for the word would naturally convey that idea.
(2) The exact age cannot be indeed determined, but two things are clear:
(a) one is, that they were undoubtedly under 20 years of age, since they were younger than the “young men” - νεανίσκοι neaniskoi - a word usually applied to those who were in the vigor of life, from about the period of 20 up to 40 years, (Notes, 1Jo 2:13), and this word would embrace all who were younger than that class; and,
(b) the other is, that the word itself would convey the idea that they were in quite early life, as the word “children” - fair translation of it - does now with us. It is not possible to determine, from the use of this word, precisely of what age the class here referred to was, but the word would imply that they were in quite early life. No rule is laid down in the New Testament as to the age in which children may be admitted to the communion. The whole subject is left to the wise discretion of the church, and is safely left there. Cases must vary so much that no rule could be laid down; and little or no evil has arisen from leaving the point undetermined in the Scriptures. It may be doubted, however, whether the church has not been rather in danger of erring by having it deferred too late, than by admitting children too early.
(3) Such children, if worthy the attention of an aged apostle, should receive the particular notice of pastors now. Compare the notes at Joh 21:15. There are reasons in all cases now, as there were then, why this part of a congregation should receive the special attention of a minister of religion. The hopes of a church are in them. Their minds are susceptible to impression. The character of the piety in the next age will depend on their views of religion. All that there is of value in the church and the world will soon pass into their hands. The houses, farms, factories; the pulpits, and the chairs of professors in colleges; the seats of senators and the benches of judges; the great offices of state, and all the offices in the church; the interests of learning, and of benevolence and liberty, are all soon to be under their control. Everything valuable in this world will soon depend on their conduct and character; and who, therefore, can over-estimate the importance of training them up in just views of religion. As John “wrote” to this class, should not pastors “preach” to them?
Because - ὅτι hoti. This particle may be rendered “for,” or “because;” and the meaning may be either that the fact that their sins were forgiven was a reason for writing to them, since it would be proper, on that ground, to exhort them to a holy life; or that he wrote to them because it was a privilege to address them as those who were forgiven, for he felt that, in speaking to them, he could address them as such. It seems to me that it is to be taken as a causal particle, and that the apostle, in the various specifications which he makes, designs to assign particular reasons why he wrote to each class, enjoining on them the duties of a holy life. Compare 1Jo 2:21.
Your sins are forgiven you - That is, this is a reason why he wrote to them, and enjoined these things on them. The meaning seems to be, that the fact that our past sins are blotted out furnishes a strong reason why we should be holy. That reason is founded on the goodness of God in doing it, and on the obligation under which we are brought by the fact that God has had mercy on us. This is a consideration which children will feel as well as others; for there is nothing which will tend more to make a child obedient hereafter, than the fact that a parent freely forgives the past.
For his name’s sake - On account of the name of Christ; that is, in virtue of what he has done for us. In 1Jo 2:13, he states another reason why he wrote to this same class - “because they had known the Father.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv12, 15 I write to you, little children, &c. St. Augustine…
I write to you, little children, &c. St. Augustine and divers others think that by these different words, he only means Christians more or less instructed and advanced in the knowledge and practice of the Christian faith. Others expound it with a regard also to their different ages and advancement in years. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v12 6. Consolatory warning against the love of the world
6. Consolatory warning against the love of the world
1Jn_2:12-17
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12I write unto you, little children, because your sins are17 forgiven you for his name’s sake. 13I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.18 I write19 unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. 14I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him20 that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. 15Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.21 If any man love the world, the love of the Father22 is not in 16him. For23 all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof:24 but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The structure of 1Jn_2:12-14.—The six members are evidently divided into two triads: the thrice repeated Present γράφω, and the thrice-repeated Aorist ἔγραψα, as well as the address τεκνία, πατέρες, νεανίσκοι joined to the Present, and παιδία, πατέρeς, νεανίσκοι joined to the Aorist, clearly intimate as much. The sentences subjoined by ὅτι exhibit the same correspondency, and confirm this arrangement. This has to be proved by the exegesis.
The addresses, 1Jn_2:12-14. Τεκνία must be taken here in the same sense as in the other passages of the Epistle where it occurs, 1Jn_2:1; 1Jn_2:28; 1Jn_3:18; 1Jn_4:4; 1Jn_5:21. It applies to all readers, the whole Church, and should not be made to designate a particular age (as has been done by Erasmus, Socinus, J. Lange), or a peculiarly near relation to the author. The diminutive form is chosen for the sake of intimacy and cordiality, and is indicative of the paternal relation and advanced age of the Apostle. The addition μου, 1Jn_2:1, may have a still more intimate sound, but there is no want of intimacy here or in 1Jn_3:18; 1Jn_4:4; 1Jn_5:21, although μου is wanting. It is altogether parallel to ἀγαπητοί, 1Jn_2:7; 1Jn_3:2; 1Jn_3:21; 1Jn_4:1; 1Jn_4:7; 1Jn_4:11, or to παιδία, 1Jn_2:18; 1Jn_3:7, (var lect.). Although παιδία is thus rarely used, nevertheless it is used, and, if we take it here=τεκνία, it is used thrice. Hence there is no reason whatsoever why παιδία, 1Jn_2:13, should not be applied to the whole Church, but, like πατέρες and νεανίσκοι, be understood to designate a particular age (with Calvin, Luther, Calov, Sander, Neander, Besser, Ebrard, al.), and to disturb the harmony of the structure of this group of sentences. Particularly as the comprehensive παιδία, little children, offered a more natural sequence to πατέρες and νεανίσκοι than τεκνία, little sons. The order in which τεκνία and παιδία occur, forbids their being referred to a particular age, for either νεανίσκοι, πατέρες would have to follow, or πατέρες, νεανίσκοι to go before. Hence τεκνία and παιδία must be construed as denoting the general address, and πατέρες and νεανίσκοι the specialization of church-members, πατέρες describing those of maturer years (πρεσβύτεροι, γέροντες, heads of families, the more experienced), and νεανίσκοι those younger in years. This is the view of most commentators. Augustine’s view, according to which the Apostle refers throughout to the same persons, only designating them by different names from different points of view, is consequently untenable; he says: “filioli, quia baptismo neonati sunt, patres, quia Christum, patrem et antiquum dierum agnoscunt, adolescentes, qui, fortes sunt et validi;” nor must we refer, with a Lapide, the different addresses to a “triplicem Christianorum in virtute gradum; pueri enim repræsentanti incipientes et neophytos; juvenes proficientes, senes perfectos.” Similar explanations are given by Clement, Oecumen., Grotius (with reference to 1Co_13:11-12; Heb_5:13; Eph_4:13-14) and others.
The tenses of the otherwise clear verb, γράφω and ἔγραψα, 1Jn_2:12-14, present great difficulties. It is clear that ὅτι does not denote the substance of his present or former writing. John writes not that their sins are forgiven, and that they have known the Father, that they have known Him that is from the beginning, that they have overcome the wicked one, that they are strong, that the word of God abideth in them, all this he does not write, and has not written to his church, but other things. Hence ὅτι can only be taken as a causative particle; it denotes the reason and cause of his writing, and must be rendered “because.” It is self-evident that ὅτι, if translated “because” once, must be translated thus throughout, in all the six consecutive places where it occurs, and not be rendered with Luther the first, fifth and sixth time “that,” and the second, third and fourth time “for” (=because).—Socinus, Schott, Sander, Neander translate “that;” Calvin, Beza, Lücke, de Wette, Huther, Düsterdieck, al. “because;” while Erdmann gives to ὅτι a declarative meaning in the first three sentences, without determining whether it should be construed objectively and causatively in the last three sentences. I write—simply defines the act of writing: I write just now what I write, because—. The object is the Epistle, even this Epistle. Now, if John, after this thrice-repeated γράφω signifying this Epistle, says again three times, ἔγραψα, the reference cannot be to the Epistle, neither to the preceding exhortations (Grotius), nor to the first chapter (Calov), neither in respect of the thrice-repeated ἔγραψα to 1Jn_1:5-7; 1Jn_1:8-10; 1Jn_2:3-11 and γράφω to 1Jn_2:15-17; 1Jn_2:18-27; 1Jn_2:28 to 1Jn_3:22 (Rickli and Lücke), nor so that the reference is general, the Aorist denoting that part of the Epistle which is already written, the Present the part as yet unwritten, but in process of development [the very act of writing, i.e., the Epistle itself.—M.] (so de Wette, Brückner, Huther) nor can the reference be to 1Jn_2:12-13, as if the apostle had said “I write, and I have written, it is a settled thing” (J. Lange, Neander, Sander, Ewald, Heubner, Bengel [“innuit commonitionem firmissimam”), nor are Beza and Düsterdieck any more satisfactory, who suppose the Present to indicate the present stand-point of the Apostle, his present act of writing, and the Aorist to describe the standpoint of the readers after they had received the Epistle, when, of course, it was written;—all these explanations are so many attempts whose very forced and artificial character shows them to be mere make-shifts, which, even in their more simple forms, do not remove the appearance of trifling, and explain as little the position of the Present relating to what follows before the Aorist relating to what goes before, as that the author by this change of tense tears asunder that which he has written from that which he is about to write, both of which belong together as one. If we are thus constrained to think of another writing, we must not think of a previous Epistle (Michaelis), but of the Gospel (Socinus, Lange, Schott, Baumgarten-Crusius, Ebrard, Hoffmann), to which this Epistle is not only nearly related in the exordium, but also in its very kernel and essence. Cf. Introduction, § 8, 3. The consciousness of the importance of the Gospel he had written, fully justifies in the Epistle the threefold repetition of ἔγραψα in consideration of the reasons relating to different groups of persons in the Church, and warranting such repetition; nor can it be thought singular that he had no other reasons (ὅτι) for having written the Gospel than those for writing the Epistle. Nor may an objection be raised to the Apostle’s not specifying the object either of ἔγραψα or γράφω, and his not describing the writing to which he refers, because both the Gospel and the Epistle were in the hands of the readers, and enabled them both to find the necessary explanation, and to prevent possible misunderstanding. [The peculiarly involved statement of Braune renders it desirable to supply the English reader with a more lucid account of the views he advocates. Γράφω, denotes the present act of writing, not only the particular sentence in which that word occurs, but the present Epistle; ἔγραψα, a writing already written, finished and complete in the hands of the readers of the Epistle, to which they might refer; and that writing was the Gospel, which would clear up every doubt, remove every difficulty, and furnish a commentary on the statements and exhortations contained in the Epistle. It must be confessed that this is, on the whole, the most simple and satisfactory solution of a very knotty question, although that advocated by de Wette, Brückner and Huther is not so trifling as Braune, echoing the words of Ebrard, asserts. Said authors explain ἔγραψα of that part of the Epistle which the Apostle had already written, and γράφω of the immediate act of writing, that is, to the Epistle in general; in their view it is proper that John should begin with γράφω while his reference to the part already written by ἔγραψα may be explained by the fact that that part (especially 1Jn_1:5 to 1Jn_2:11) contains the fundamental principles of the subsequent exhortations and developments. Personally we prefer the view of Braune, but many readers will, doubtless, incline to that set forth by Huther and others.—Ebrard gives the following synopsis of, the two triads:
TRIAD THE FIRST.TRIAD THE SECOND.γράφω.ἔγραψα.1. τεκνία=all readers.1. Children (in point of age).2. Fathers.2. Fathers.3. Young men.3. Young men.and Wordsworth (who, however, does not discuss the details of his arrangement, and carries the series down to 1Jn_2:28) makes a series of seven, closed by an eighth, the octave of the first, with a symbolical reference to the number seven and eight. His arrangement is this:
γράφω ὑμῖν, τεκνία, 1Jn_2:12.
γράφω ὑμῖν, πατέρες, 1Jn_2:13.ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, πατέρες, 1Jn_2:14.γράφω ὑμῖν, νεανίσκοι, 1Jn_2:13.ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, νεανίσκοι, 1Jn_2:15.ἔγραψα ὑμῖν, παιδία, 1Jn_2:13.παιδία, ἐσχάτη ὥρα ἐστί, 1Jn_2:18.καὶ νῦν, τεκνία, μένετε ἐν αὐτῷ, 1Jn_2:28.
This arrangement is more curious than valuable or logical, and merely added to complete the catalogue of representative views begun above. M.].
The reasons of the Apostle’s writing 1Jn_2:12-14.
First series, 1Jn_2:12; 1Jn_2:18 b.
1Jn_2:12. I write unto you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you.—The Perfect ἀφέωνται (See Winer, Grammar, § 14, 3, p. 98, on the form of this word) points to the forgiveness of sins, mentioned 1Jn_1:8, sqq.; 1Jn_2:1-2, as a completed fact, which, as a ground whereon they stand, as a sphere wherein they move, as a benefit they have received, has and is to have on them and the rest of their life a lasting effect and an efficient power. [The forgiveness of sins is the ground of the Christian life.—M.]. Vulg., Augustine and Calvin render falsely “remittuntur,” so Luther, “are forgiven you,” [and E. V.—M.] For His name’s sake. The reference is not to Him who forgives sins, God the Father, but to Him, for whose sake the Father forgives; that is Christ; for διὰ with the Accusative is not per, through (instrumental), but propter, on account of, for the sake of, indicating the ground of the forgiveness of sins, and here, where the cordiality of the address (little children), and the direct application to the persons addressed (I write unto you, your sins have been forgiven you), are to be brought out, it denotes the objective ground, rendered subjective: since His name is with you, in you and among you; His name is He Himself and what He is, but revealed and known, believed and confessed; hence=since ye have believed on Him, confess and invoke Him, individually and collectively, and since He has manifested Himself and may yet further manifest Himself as ἱλασμὸς, παράκλητος; consequently for Christ’s sake in you. Thus we might combine with Neander the explanation of Düsterdieck, who insists with the majority of commentators on the objective ground of the forgiveness of sins, and that of Luther, who understands the subjective ground. [Neander says: “He comforts them with the assurance of sins forgiven through the mediation of Christ. For the name of Christ are their sins forgiven; that is, for the sake of what Christ is as the Son of God and the Son of Man, the divine-human Redeemer—it being as such that they invoke Him as their Mediator.”—M.].
1Jn_2:13 a. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning.—Ὁ άπ̓ ἀρχῆς, according to 1Jn_1:1 and the context, can only signify Christ, with reference to His eternal, Divine Nature; for the ἀρχή reaches beyond the beginning of time and of the world, into God’s eternal life, and must not be weakened into “initium novi fœderis et evangelii patefacti” (Socinus). Grotius and a Lapide, without all contextual sanction, explain “novistis Deum, qui Senex dierum,” Dan_7:9; Dan 13:22. Ἐγνώκατε consequently denotes only the more profound understanding of the nature and eternal glory of Christ, spiritual knowledge, and not personal acquaintance, not even on the part of some (Bengel: “vivebant patres eo tempore, quo Christus in terris fuerat conspiciendus, et eorum nonnulli eum et facie et fide, omnes fide cognorant”) so the ἐγνώκατε τὸν πατέρα, 1Jn_2:13 c must on no account be explained of personal acquaintance. Nor does this exhortation warrant the idea that the Fathers, the aged, love to hear and talk of old things, and that to them, in particular, knowledge ought to belong. (The Greek Fathers, Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Neander). But more profound knowledge in general, and knowledge of Jesus Christ, His Person and work in particular, is peculiarly suited to the calmness and experience of old age.
1Jn_2:13 b. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.—While young men are exposed to the power of temptation in respect of the world, both within and without, they have also fresh vigor and courage to fight against and overcome the wicked one, τὸν πονηρόν, the devil, who is thus designated in the N. T. in general (Mat_13:19, cf. Mat_13:28; Mat_13:38, sq.; Eph_6:16); and in this Epistle in particular (1Jn_3:12; 1Jn_5:18 sq.) Carpzov: “Viris fortibus et robustis tribuitur supra fortissimum et robustissimum victoria.” But we must not narrow the idea with Bengel, who says: “Insigne quoddam specimen virtutis a juvenibus, quibus scribit, exhibitum, cujusmodi erat constantia confessionis in persecutione Domitiani, itemque reditus juvenis illius, quem apostolus summa mansuetudine a lactrocinio ad pœnitentiam reduxit, suavissime descriptus a Clemente Al. lib. quis dives salv. c. 42, ab. Eusebio H. E., lib. 3, cap. 20 et a Chrysostomo, Paræn. 1 ad Theodorum lapsum, cap. 11. We may think of it, but take it in the widest reach. That which John says to all, the τεκνίοις, that their sins have been forgiven, applies indeed to all, and it does not apply exclusively to the fathers, that they have known the Lord, or exclusively to the young men, that they have overcome the wicked one; for it may be that there are fathers who have just gained the victory, and young men who have acquired profound knowledge; but besides the general truth of the forgiveness of sins, those particular affirmations are admirably distributed among the different classes, and only possible and real on the condition of that general declaration. “Christian life-truth is essentially one; in whichever direction its riches may be developed, or to whichever relations it may be applied, all these different exhortations and instructions are always of one casting, resting on one foundation, and animated by one spirit” Düsterdieck). But John has a particular word, a word of peculiar application for the whole Church, as well as for the separate groups and individuals.
Second series, 1Jn_2:13 c–1Joh_2:14.
1Jn_2:13 c.—I have written unto you, little sons, because ye have known the Father. To know the Father, that is, to know God as our Father, to cast deeper looks into the peace-thoughts of His heart concerning us, into the holy Love which is His Being, is possible only in the more intimate converse with Him which He opens in the forgiveness of our sins and our reconciliation. The child, with its child-like ways and mind, with its humility, attachment, diligence, teachableness and receptivity, is nearer to God than an adult. Here also apply the words, “Become as little children” Mat_18:3. It is easy to see that we have here the parallel of the clause, “Because your sins have been forgiven you;” adoption and forgiveness of sins interpenetrate each other, and more than mere correlates. He now writes to the fathers precisely the same thing as before:
1Jn_2:14. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning.—His object is not to write something else; for he has rightly divided the word.
I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.—“Alii juvenes corpore, vos fide.” (Bengel). Mat_12:29; Luk_11:21, sq.; Heb_11:34. It is the strength of the Spirit for the combat and victory, the strength of their own spirit, and derived from the Spirit of God, given from above, through and with the adoption and the forgiveness of sins. The ἀγγελία (1Jn_1:5). with the ἀλήθεια 1Jn_1:6; 1Jn_1:8; 1Jn_2:4), in the word of God, (1Jn_1:10; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_2:5; 1Jn_2:7), creates and moves this vital strength and vital courage for the combat. Hence ἰσχυροί ἐστε is immediately followed by καἱ ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν μένει. Ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ, therefore, does not denote Christ, although He is the centre and star of that word. The word of God, with its eternal power, must not only be brought to them, but it must have entered into them and remain in them; then it happens: καὶ νενικήκατε τὸν πονηρόν. The strength is grounded on the word of God, which abides in them (μένει), and in virtue of this strength they have overcome the devil [the thought belongs to Huther—M.]; the decisive battle, of course, has been fought by Jesus Christ, but His people ought to follow up His victory by continuous warfare, and gain further triumphs in their heart and sphere of life, cf. Joh_16:33. A retrospective view of the preceding verses, assigning the reasons for the Apostle’s writing and having written, characterizes the readers as possessing not a small degree of Christian knowledge and ability, and the writings in question as taking for granted such a degree of Christian culture. While we may therefore think of the Epistle and the Gospel, we cannot say with Ebrard that the Gospel is wholesome and pleasant food for the little ones (παιδία), but that the Epistle can be understood by adults only. Now has been laid down an important and sure foundation for the subsequent warnings and exhortations (Luther, S. Schmid, Episcopius, Bengel, Lücke, de Wette, Düsterdieck, al.): You have received and acquired so much, and succeeded so well, that you ought to progress, and not to retrograde! You stand in life-fellowship with God—do not dissolve it!
The warning. 1Jn_2:15 a. Love not the world, neither the things in the world. The correct exposition of the whole depends on the meaning of ὁ κόσμος, which signifies according to Suidas: εὐπρέπeιαν, τὸ πᾶν, τάξιν, τὸ πλῆθος, or according to Hesychius: κάλλος and then the beautiful fabric of the material universe. “Quem κόσμον Græci nomine ornamenti appellaverunt, eum nos a perfecta absolutaque elegantia mundum” (Plinius. H. N. 2, 3). The LXX do not apply the word κόσμος, strictly taken, to the universe. In the New Testament we find it used in all these senses, 1Pe_1:3=εὐπρέπεια, τάξις; Act_17:24; Joh_21:25; Joh_17:5; Mat_24:21; Rev_12:8; Rev_17:8=τὸ πᾶν, and especially by John in the Gospel, Joh_1:9; Joh_11:9; Joh_12:19; Joh_18:36; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:1; 1Jn_4:3; 1Jn_4:9; 1Jn_4:14.=the creation of the earth, especially of the world of man (Düsterdieck)=τὸ πλήθος. Now the difference between οὖτος ὁ κόσμος=τὰ κάτω and τὰ ὃνω (Joh_8:23), which is at the same time the opposite of both, makes κόσμος to denote the whole kingdom of sin and death, inimical to God, under Satan its prince, and more particularly the world of man as fallen away and estranged from God (Joh_12:31; Joh_14:30; Joh_16:11, 1Jn_4:4; 1Jn_5:19; 2Co_4:4; Eph_6:11, sq.). But all this without the faintest trace of dualism. For the κόσμος, as originally created by God, was very good (cf. Gen_1:31, with Joh_1:3; Joh_1:10), but became evil and is the object of redeeming love (Joh_3:16; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:14), so that the children of the world become the children of God in their faith in Christ and His Word (Joh_1:12; Joh_12:45-50); there is no man who is not first born flesh of the flesh, and yet born spirit of the spirit may not and should not become the child of God (Joh_3:6; 1Jn_3:9; 1Jn_3:14),—Now the sum-total of this earthly kingdom of evil is alternately applied in a real sense to the earthly sphere in general, and in a personal sense to the world of man, sinful, and abiding in sin; and these two conceptions frequently and easily play the one into the other. The present passage must be interpreted by the usus loquendi current in the N. T., and we must “lay down the rule that κόσμος bears the same meaning in all the three verses, so intimately connected together” (Düsterdieck). We cannot say with a Lapide “omnibus hisce modis” (i.e. three different meanings: “1. homines mundani, in his proprie est concupiscentia; 2. orbis sublunaris, in hoc mundo proprie et formaliter non est concupiscentia; sed in eo est concupiscentia materialis i.e. objectum concupiscibile: 3. ipsa mundana vita vel concupiscentia in genere): omnibus hisce modis mundus hic accipi potest et Johannes nunc ad unum, nunc ad alterum respicit; ludit enim in voce mundus.” Points of support necessary to the right explanation of our passage are these: κόσμος is the opposite of God, it is a whole consisting of various parts and members, it is easily the object of love: it has a life, but lacks permanence and endurance. Hence it is evidently the earthly sphere of life, especially as filled with the world of man and opposing God, whose real side often alternates or concurs with its personal side; as applied to things, we have to think not so much of trees, flowers, mountains and stars as of whatever forms part of and constitutes the world of man, such as rank or dignity, possessions and gifts of the mind and of the body and such like. Consequently the κόσμος must not be taken as the sum-total of transient creatures as far as they are natural things as Lücke (sum-total of all sensuous manifestations, exciting sensuous pleasure), with whom we must rank, de Wette, Brückner, or J. Lange (systema totius mundi), Neander (the world and worldly things), and others construe the word. But equally objectionable is the interpretation which makes κόσμος=the evil inhering in the world, as given by Greek authors (ἡ κοσμικὴ φιληδονία καὶ διάχυσις), Luther (=the world, i.e. ungodliness itself, human passions according to which man does not rightly use the creature), Calvin (omne genus corruptionis et malorum omnium abyssum), Morus (malum morale) Semler (vulgata consuetudo hominum, res corporeas unice appetentium), Erdmann (totus complexus et ambitus mali), Ebrard (τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ=kinds of sinful living, thinking and demeanor e.g. covetousness, ambition, sensuality.—M.]). Lastly, we must not limit the application of κόσμος to “the heathen world” (Lange), “the mass of ordinary men” (Oecumenius: ὁ συρφετὸς not συνφυτός, as Braune corrects M.] ὄχλος, ὅς οὐ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ἔχει ἀγάπην ἐν ἑαυτῷ; Calov.: homines dediti rebus hujus mundi), “the major part of men” (Grotius: humanum genus, secundum partem majorem, quæ in malis actionibus versatur), “to that part of the world which constituted the anti-christians” (Storr, Socinus). Cf. Düsterdieck and Huther ad loc. [the latter giving all the passages cited by Braune.—M.].—Now while John, according to the Lord, urges love, notwithstanding Joh_3:16 : οὕτως ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον he says here: μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον. There is a difference, if the Lord our Saviour and Redeemer, who is above the world, loves, or if we love that are of the world, needing salvation, although salvable. To love is to surrender oneself; God surrenders Himself in order to save, overcome and glorify; the creature can only surrender itself to the world to be ruined, swept along and carried off. The creature is forbidden to enter into intimate and vital communion, or entire life-fellowship with that sphere of humanity which has fallen away from God. The Saviour does it in order to save from it those who suffer themselves to be seized by Him.—Μηδέ=but not even, or no, not even. The Apostle consequently draws a sharp distinction between τὸν κόσμον and τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, the whole or the general, and the particular or the specific. You are not even to love a particular, a specific part of the κόσμος; one may be fascinated by this thing, another by that, it all amounts to the same; the love of the world is there where we find the love of the particular or of one particular in the world, be it the gold of the earth, which is highly valued among men, or human wisdom, or honour with men, or power and dominion, or only influence of a less degree and in a limited sphere.—This warning is obviously addressed to all, the πατέρες and νεανίσκοι. “Omnibus hæc generaliter ecclesiæ filiis scribit” (Bede). It is not said to the children only (Oecumenius); for παιδία and τεκνία, denote the whole church (see above); nor to the young men only (Bengel, Sander, Besser), although it follows the last address. The next verse, which is purely general, as well as the import of this warning, require us to understand it as being universal in its application.
The reasons. 1Jn_2:15 b–17.
First reason. 1Jn_2:15 b, 16. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is
not in him.—“Unum cor duos tam sibi adversarios amores non capit.” (Bede) “Contraria non sunt simul” (Bengel). Since ὁ κόσμος is the object of love, since the Apostle is concerned with the love of the world and the heart of man which loves, ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρὸς is of course our love of the Father; for the love of the Father is not incompatible with the love of the world (Joh_3:16). Hence ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρὸς denotes neither “amor Patris erga suos et filialis erga Patrem” (Bengel), nor “the love of God toward us” (Luther II., Calov.), nor the “caritas quam Pater præscribit” (Socinus). We have here the same antithesis which is noted in Mat_6:24 : θεῷ καὶ μαμωνᾷ δουλεύειν, Rom_8:5 (σάρξ and πνεῦμα), 1Jn_2:7 (φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός ἔχθρα εἰς θεόν); 2Co_6:15 (Χριστὸς and Βελίαρ); Jam_4:4 (ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ θεοῦ and in this Epistle 1Jn_1:5 (φῶς and σκοτία). This is the reason of the warning against the love of the world; the love of the world is incompatible with the love of God, as our Father; the love of the world cannot consist with the sonship of God. [Christians are the children of God, God is their Father; their vocation is to love their Father, not to love the world.—M.]. This is explicitly brought out in
1Jn_2:16. Because all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. The connection of this verse with the one preceding by ὅτι=because, compels us to emphasize πᾶν; for, because there is nothing in the world, the κόσμος, which is of the Father, the love of the world is utterly incompatible with the love of the Father.—Πᾶν τὸ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ is evidently not identical with τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ (1Jn_2:15); the Singular denotes the transition from the particular to the unit: what is in the world is conceived as a whole, a totality comprehending the particular; hence the reference is not to objects only, as all those maintain who make it identical with τά ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ (although Ebrard’s exposition correctly adverts to particular forms of demeanour, and Düsterdieck speaks of a “transformation of the conception of the objects of the love of the world into the conception of subjective love itself and its essential modes of representation”); still less to persons (“omnes mundi dilectores non habent nisi concupiscentiam” Bede); but as Huther excellently puts it: “All that which constitutes the substance, i.e. the essence of the κόσμος, its inward life, which animates it.” The apposition indicates the nature of πᾶν τὸ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, and shows how we are to take, and what is the true import of these words. The apposition has obviously respect to life-manifestations in the world of man; the whole, the sum and substance, the totality of those life-manifestations in the God-forsaken world of man, is not of God, but without, and opposed to God. In dealing with the difficulty connected with the exposition of the apposition: ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου, we have to remember that all the three clauses must be taken as coördinated, and that the Genitive must be construed alike in all three cases. The three ideas are placed in juxtaposition by καί. Hence Düsterdieck errs in making ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς the principal idea governing ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν and ἀλοζονεία τοῦ βίου. This is confirmed by the explanation of the separate ideas. In ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν we have evidently the Genitive of the subject; it cannot mean: lust after the eyes. We have therefore three times the Genitive of the subject. In ἐπιθυμια τῆς σαρκός the Genitive of the subject is analogous to the idea: ἡ σὰρξ ἐπιθυμεῖ (Gal_5:17), and to the grammatical usage of the N. T., where, with the exception of 2Pe_2:10, the Genitive connected with ἐπιθυμία always denotes the subject; but σάρξ denotes here what it signifies elsewhere, e.g. in Eph_2:3 (ἐπιθυμίαι τῆς σαρκὸς.) 1Pe_2:11 (αἱ σαρκικαὶ ἐπιθυμίαι), the desire, the lust of the flesh, as suggested by the antithesis of πνεύματι ἄγεσθαι, ἐν πνεύματι περιπατεῖν. Limitations like those of Augustine (“desiderium earum rerum quæ pertinent ad carnem, sicut cibus et concubitus et cætera hujusmodi”), Grotius, Baumgarten-Crusius, Sander and Besser, who agree with him, or those of Brückner, who suggests “carnal lust in the strict sense,” Bengel (“ea quibus pascuntur sensus qui appellantur fruitivi: gustus et tactus,) Gerlach (“every kind of the lust of enjoyment”) and Ebrard (“sexual enjoyments”)—are not in agreement with the context and more or less arbitrary. Only the limitation required by the coördinated ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν is justifiable; but even this is an ἐπιθυμία, and as such equal to the former, yet not τῆς σαρκὸς, but τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν. This ἐπιθυμία must not be subordinated to the former (as is done by Lücke, de Wette and Düsterdieck), but it is coördinated with it. Nor must the Genitive be taken at once subjectively and objectively: “the lust of the eyes, and at the same time that, wherein as the sensuous-worldly, the eyes delight themselves” (Brückner). The lust of the eyes has respect to seeing, consequently the lust to see, and to see that which is the object of such lust. Hence Spener explains correctly: “all sinful lust which seeks for enjoyment in the very seeing,” and so does Huther: “the desire of seeing that which is unseemly, and the sinful gratification afforded by seeing it.” Hence it must not be restricted to “omnis curiositas in spectaculis, in theatris” (Augustine, Neander); nor is it sufficient to say with Calvin: “tam libidinosos aspectus comprehendit, quam vanitatem, quæ in pompis et inani splendors vagatur.” Nor may it be referred with Bengel to “ea, quibus tenentur sensus investigativi, oculus sive visus, auditus et olfactus.” Nor must extraneous ideas be added thereto, so as to make it denote a desire of possession excited by sight (Rickli), or straightforth πλεονεξία (Luther, Socinus, Grotius, Lorinus, Wolf, Baumgarten-Crusius, Gerlach, al.), or even “the whole sphere of the desires of selfishness, envy, covetousness, hatred and revenge” (Ebrard). Thus the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes are arbitrarily distinguished from each other or rather confounded, since the former is taken as sensuality and the latter as covetousness, or vice versa. The eyes, instruments of the senses, are preëminently the ministering members of the life of the soul and the spirit: here is flesh, become transparent, whereby surrounding objects and manifestations produce impressions on the life of the soul, and the soul requires insight of them. As the Scripture draws a distinction between grass and the flower of grass, and understands thereby the flesh and the glory of the flesh (1Pe_1:24 : σὰρξ ὡς χόρτος and πᾶσα δόξα αὐτῆς ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου), and thus points beyond the nearest sphere of carnal life to the life-sphere of the soul, so we may distinguish the ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός from the ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν in such manner that the former denotes absolute, purely sensuous lust, and the latter lust which through the instrumentality of the soul, points to the spiritual sphere of life. It is noteworthy that as Peter subjoins the words (1Jn_2:25) “τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα τοῦ θεοῦ μένει εῖς τὸν αἰῶνα,” so John has almost the identical addition: “ὁ δἐ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ μένει εἰς αἰῶνα.” Hence the former includes all the desires of possession and enjoyment, of covetousness and sensuality, of vulgar or refined form, while the latter embraces the desire which longs for, seeks and finds gratification in social intercourse and the manifestations of social joys, in works of art down to the rude outbreaks of festal joy.—To this is now added as a third καὶ ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου. While ἐπιθυμία refers twice to acquisition, ἀλαζονεία has respect to spending. The noun occurs, besides this place, in the N. T. only at Jam_4:16 : ἐν ταῖς ἀλαζονείαις ὑμῶν, the adjective in Rom_1:30, after, and in 2Ti_3:2, before ὑπερήφανος. In classical Greek it signifies arrogance and vaunting, with the secondary idea of untruthfulness and boasting about one’s rank or wealth. In James it evidently denotes the outbreaks of that arrogance which overlooks the vanity and nothingness of earthly happiness, and boastingly confides in it. The ἀλαζών is the vain braggart at whom and with whom one may perhaps smile; the ὑπερήφανος is the haughty man, who is irritable and injurious; the one recognizable in the national character of the French, the other in that of the English. The Genitive τοῦ βίου, of the life, with reference to sustenance and necessaries, as is evident from 1Jn_3:17; Mar_12:44; Luk_8:14; Luk_8:43; Luk_15:12; Luk_15:30; Luk_21:4; 2Ti_2:4, designating occasionally personal property (living), indicates the side on which this braggart arrogance does and is wont to appear, as well where there is little or great abundance as where it is merely coveted and want is concealed; braggart arrogance is wont to appear in connection with bodily sustenance and necessaries. Augustine: “Jactare se vult in honoribus, magnus sibi videtur, sive de divitiis, sive de aliqua potentia.” Bengel: “Ut velit quam plurimus esse in victu, cultu, apparatu, suppellectili, ædificiis, prædiis, famulitio, clientibus, jumentis, muneribus, etc., Rev_18:12. Chrysostomus appellat τὸν τῦφον τὸν βιωτικὸν et τὴν φαντασίαν τοῦ βίου.” Examples occur in Gen_11:2-4; 1Ch_22:1, sqq.; Ecc_2:1, sqq.; Eze_28:12-19; Dan_4:27; Rev_17:4-6; Revelation 18, 4-7. So Lücke, Sander, Besser and Huther; Neander, Gerlach and Düsterdieck may be included in this category. Hence it is not correct to restrict the meaning to ambition, superbia, ambitio (Cyrillus, Socinus, al.).—We should hold with Bengel that: “Non coincidunt cum his tribus tria vitia cardinalia, voluptas, avaritia, superbia: sed tamen in his continentur.” The hypothesis that this trinity contains, a complete indication of all the forms in which evil is apt to manifest itself, has become traditional, and goes so far that Bede following Augustine said: “Per hæc tria tantum cupiditas humana tentatur; per hæc tria Adam tentatus est et victus; per hæc tentatus est Christus et vicit.” A Lapide actually discovered in them the correlatives of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity answering to the three primariæ virtutes, continentia, caritas, humilitas [which according to Huther are closely connected with the three monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.—M.]. The majority of practical expositors have followed this track with various modifications, even Pascal (Pensées, 28, 55) says: “libido sentiendi, sciendi, dominandi.” Lücke very rightly opposed this interpretation and maintained that the point in question did not relate to cardinal vices, but to the chief forms (Brückner; “leading Masses”) of worldly-mindedness. These, as Bengel observes, sustain an intimate relation to one another: “Etiam ii, qui arrogantiam vitæ non amant, tamen concupiscentiam oculorum sectari possunt, et qui hanc superarunt, tamen concupiscentiam carnis persæpe retinent: hæc enimprofundissima et communissima, apud minores, medioximos et potentes: apud eos etiam, qui abnegationem sui colere videntur; et rursum, nisi vincatur, ab ea facile progreditur homo ad concupiscentiam oculorum, ubi materiam habet; et ab hac ad superbiam vitæ, ubi facultatem habet; tertioque includitur secundum, secundo primum.” Thus ambition is ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός only in so far as it wants to cast others in the shade, it is ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλ μῶν as far as it aims at recognition and marks of recognition, and it is ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου as far as it is indulged in the consciousness of position and wealth, and in every form there are degrees of intensiveness and coarseness. The same holds good of avarice, voluptuousness and the love of pleasure. We have here by no means a complete catalogue of the biasses and forms of manifestation of evil. Unlovingness specified above (1Jn_2:2-11) and mendacity mentioned below (1Jn_2:18-20) although connected with this [trichotomy M.], are not contained in or denoted by it. Hence Luther, followed by Sander, rightly observes: “These three particulars are not of the Father: 1. Hatred of the brethren. 2. The three idols of the world. 3. False and corrupt doctrine.—The terms ἐκ τοῦ πατρός, ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου εἶναι denote origin and indicate similarity, congruity and connection. This is the profound truth that nothing is esteemed with God except His own Image; whatever is to have respect to Him, to belong to Him, to be, and able to be united with Him, must come from Him; 1Jn_2:29; 1Jn_3:7 sqq.; 1Jn_4:2 sqq.; 7 sqq.; 1Jn_5:1 sqq.; Joh_8:44. So Düsterdieck, Huther, and Ebrard in opposition to de Wette [Paulus and Baumgarten-Crusius—M. ], who deny the reference to origin and restrict the application of the terms to congruity and similarity. The antithesis, intensified by the repetition of ἐστί “is not of the Father, but is of the world” marks with peculiar pointedness the world as the source of ungodliness. The world will not tolerate any thing that does not derive its being from it or belongs to it. We see therefore how God and the world are just here opposed to each other, irreconciled and irreconcilable; both are inflexible and neither can yield the place to the other. [Düsterdieck: “Through our whole Epistle runs the view which is also manifest in the Gospel of St. John, that only the mind which springs from God is directed to God. He who is born of God, loves God, knows God, does God’s will. God Himself, who first loved us, viz. in Christ His incarnate Son, begot in us that love which of moral necessity returns again to the Father, and of like necessity embraces our brethren also. This love is hated by the world, because it springs not from the world. It depends not on the world, any more than that perverted love which springs from the world and is directed towards the world, the lust of the flesh, etc., can be directed to the Father or to God’s children. So that John grasps in reality down to the very foundations of the moral life, when he reminds his readers of the essentially distinct origin of the love of the world, and the love of God. The inmost kernel of the matter is hereby laid bare, and with it a glimpse is given of the whole process of the love of the world and the love of God, even to the end; and this end is now set forth expressly with extraordinary power.”—M.]. But
The second reason: 1Jn_2:17.
And the world passeth away and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.—The world can only be taken here in the same sense as in the preceding verses, viz.: the world of man fallen away from and opposing God, which is a power, and as a power awes many, but does and has great things. But what is true of the σκοτία, 1Jn_2:8, applies also to it: παράγεται, it passeth away, it is passing away and disappearing; the sense must not be limited to the transitory world, to be destroyed in the judgment (Bede: “mundus transibit, quum in die judicii per ignem in meliorem mutabitur figuram, ut sit cœlum novum et terra nova”), nor must the term be so construed as to express the consciousness of the approaching advent of Christ and the judgment of the κόσμος connected with it (Luther, with reference to 1Jn_2:8; 1Jn_2:18 : ἐσχάτη ὥρα). It is, in effect, the uninterruptedly peculiar nature and destiny of the world (Oecumenius: “τὰ κοσμικὰ ἐπιθυμήματα οὐκ ἔχει τὸ μένον τε καὶ ἑατὼς, τὰ δὲ κατὰ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ διακρῆ καὶ διαιωνίζοντα (Düsterdieck: “because of its alienation from God, doomed to passing away, to death”). The antithesis μένει requires and confirms this view. Although Düsterdieck distinguishes his view, according to which he finds here more permanently valid axiomatic truths concerning the course of the love of God or the love of the world, from that of Oecumenius, who gives prominence to the properties of the love of the world and of the obedience to the commandments of God, the two views ought really to be combined thus: it fares with the world according to its nature, and the nature of the world agrees with its passing away. And as it passes away, so also passes away its lust, the lust which inheres in it, emanates from it, and governs it. Hence αὐτοῦ is the Genitive of the subject, as maintained by most commentators; it cannot mean lust after it or in it, as if αὐτοῦ were the Genitive of the object (Lücke, Neander, Sander, Besser, al.). Of course, the lust of the world refers also to the world and the things and manifestations in it, and not to God and the riches of His Kingdom. If the whole, the world, belonging to death, passes away, then also its parts, the life that is in it, its separate manifestations and exhibitions of life in individuals, must pass away. This makes one thoroughly loathe the love of the world—the ἀγαπᾷν τὸν κόσμον. Who wants to seize and hold as the object of his love that which is perishable, doomed to death and perpetual defeat? The clause ὁ δὲ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ supplies not only an antithesis, but affirms that the ἐπιθυμία τοῦ κόσμου does not the will of God, that the ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρός shows and verifies itself in the ποιεῖν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, even as unfolded in 1Jn_2:3, sqq., that the child does not trifle with the will of the Father, for the Father is God. To such applies the μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, the antithesis of παράγεται, he abides therefore unto, into eternity, sharing and assured of the imperishable and beatific life: redeemed from θάνατος, from the σκοτία, he gains φῶς, ζωὴ αἰώνιος. [Huther: “The destiny of the κόσμος is θάνατος, that of the children of God ζωὴ αἰώνιος.”—M.]. This antithesis points to the fact that the παράγεται of the world will sooner or later have run its course, and that the world will have ceased to exist. Most singular and arbitrary is the opinion of Ebrard, who says that “αἰὼν is the æon which will gloriously begin with the visible establishment of Christ’s Kingdom on earth,” and that consequently ὁ ποιῶν–εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα signifies that “he that does the will of God will abide until then, until the Kingdom of Christ is established, and be suffered to witness the victory of Christ’s Kingdom.” The addition, “quomodo et deus manet in æternum,” found in several Latin translations, but not in Jerome’s, is rather remarkable.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The gift of the forgiveness of sins (1Jn_2:12), which is, at the same time, the gift of adoption, [of being made the child of God—M.], 1Jn_2:13 c, establishes a relationship which must verify itself in corresponding conduct, in the way of sanctification. God has taken the initiative, but man must seize it and hold fast, keep and verify it in striving after more profound knowledge, and in struggling for the peace of victory. On the gift of the forgiveness of our sins, and on that of our adoption with the Father, rest the more intimate knowledge of Christ, the victorious fight against Satan, and the enjoyment of the fruits of victory. In the fellowship with the Father and the Son are given us life, light, forgiveness, truth, wisdom, and understanding, and victory over the world and the devil. The victory of Christ (Joh_16:33) is the presupposition of all true victories, and His victory must continue in ours. John grounds the duties of Church members on the high privileges and immunities of the Christian state, and makes gratitude the principle of morality.
2. The peace-work of profound meditation and mature knowledge in men can only take place and prove successful if preceded by the struggles and triumphs of young men [i.e., the man must have passed through the discipline of the young man.—M.]. Great purity and integrity are indispensable to the clear perception and more thorough knowledge of the glory of Christ, of His Person, His Word, and His work. True knowledge presupposes life in fellowship with the Person known; it is a living reality and not a mere dogmatical formula (concerning the Person of Christ). Nothing but fighting against Satan will facilitate our knowledge of the eternal glory of Christ.
3. The κόσμος is diametrically opposed to God, and the heart of man cannot combine the love of the world and the love of the Father; the latter cannot thrive because of the former, or the former must be overcome, and disappearing, yield the place to the latter in the course of its growth and development. Where the life of [emanating from—M.] God is extant there may still be the world, but its power must be broken, it must wane more and more, and its still surviving remainder must recede before increasing and waxing knowledge and joy. Worldly life and godly life are not only two different biasses, but two opposite inclinations, incompatible and destroying each other.
4. It is not in point of space that we must flee from the world, but it is with reference to ethical principles that we must shun it, without loving it, turned away from it, to prevent our dying and perishing in and with it; some one thing may so effectually lay hold of one or another as to sweep him along with the fearful destruction of the whole κόσμος.
5. The definite superiority of the divine to the worldly may be gathered from the transitoriness of the world. Here is “afforded a vista through the whole process of the world’s history, as well as of the love of God, right on to the end” (Düsterdieck), and at the same time an insight into the biography of individuals.
6. He that has separated himself from God, has estranged himself from Him, falls into the power of death; the world contains death in the love of itself. None but those who love the Father have the life; yet none love the Father but those who have and with true fidelity keep His word. But there exists no eternal kingdom of evil, the principially dualistic predisposition to evil, but only a condition which has become so, from which any and every man may and shall be redeemed, who does not offer any resistance.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The gift of the forgiveness of sins sets us the task of fighting against the destroyer, and acquiring the knowledge of the Saviour. The gift of the forgiveness of sins is sonship with God and the knowledge of the Father. Holy Scripture directs us first to the knowledge of sin, then to fight against and overcome the wicked one, and lastly to acquire the knowledge of the God-man. Holy Scripture addresses first children—that is to say, the children of God; the word of God is the word of the Father to His children; the word of God calls all, whom it addresses, children, because He is the Father of all. Young men and fathers cannot go beyond this child-ship [I retain this Germanism in this place in order to render the thought more perspicuous; neither the word sonship nor adoption conveys the precise shade of thought.—M.]. No age of life can or may desire to surpass the stage of childhood before God. The life-truth of the Gospel is only one, emanating from one Spirit, resting on one foundation, consisting in one Spirit, but like the sun, shedding its illuminating and vitalizing beams in all directions: away with all false individualizing and all dry moralizing! He that loves not the world in God as the object of redemption to its salvation, loves it only without God to his own perdition. The world, which thou lovest, reacts more on thee than thou art able to influence it; thou wilt sooner become worldly through it, than it will become Christian through thee. Shun not the world, but love it not; be not afraid of it, but be afraid of thy love of it.
Bodmer:—John the Apostle survived twelve Roman emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianus, Titus, Domitianus and Nerva; great expectations and hopes were entertained of each one of these lords of the world, but all failed in the case of the best of them: instead of healing, they inflicted wounds, and many came to a miserable end.
Gerson:—Amor habet vim uniendi, si terram amas, terrenus es; si deum, divinus.
Spener:—Every age should diligently cultivate the virtue becoming it before others, which is especially done by each particular age applying its natural gifts to the growth of life (understanding in the case of the old, strength in the case of young men, simplicity in the case of children).—Those who have overcome Satan as young men, may afterwards truly and fully know Christ as fathers, while those who have served him do not easily attain such knowledge, which is a kind of reward of grace.—The word of God does not only come to us, but abides also in us, and consequently is not a dead or passing sound—That which does not abide forever is not worthy of our love; for God has created, appointed and called us unto eternal things.
Starke:—Preachers should particularly urge obedience to the commandments of God, and renunciation of the love of the world on the plea of the grace of God in the forgiveness of sins, as a more powerful incentive than considerations founded on the Law.—Although you have conquered the devil once, he will return and assault you with sevenfold strength to rob you of your crown. Therefore, ye warriors of Jesus, grow not secure, but think that your task is not done with one well-fought battle.—O the deluded souls that fancy that it is the privilege of their rank to use the world at their pleasure, to lead a worldly and carnal life, and to be good Christians for all! They will terribly deceive themselves, for the mere name is not sufficient.—Christians, would you love the Father, you must content yourselves with the necessaries of the body, bridle your eyes, and lead a life of simplicity.—The world and its lusts pass swiftly away, like an arrow cuts through the air, like smoke blows away, like a river flows along, like a bird flies past, like a sound dies away. What folly to set one’s hope and pleasure on such changeable and transitory things!—It is well, but not enough to know the will of God, we must do it in the strength of God, with all diligence, at all times, in all things, if we would abide forever.—It is a great mercy of God that He accepts our poor, imperfect doing, provided it be done with a childlike heart, as the doing of His will—None can do the will of God without denying his own will, for the will of God and corruptible self-will are utterly opposed to each other.
Heubner:—Fathers are spiritual adults, matured Christians; they have known Christ, the Son of God, from personal experience, made proof of His power, or He has been fully formed in them (Eph_4:13; 1Th_2:7; 1Th_2:11; Heb_5:14). The image of Christ has a feeble and tender beginning in childhood; it continues growing in youth, but does not attain perfect clearness with open face until manhood. No warrior can go beyond this: Christ and His knowledge excel all perfection. We have here the case of souls that long since have acquired forgiveness and cleansing from their sins, overcome the wicked one, stood severe trials and hard conflicts, in victory have been planted in the likeness of Christ’s death, and made experience of the power of His resurrection. As fathers they possess spiritual generative powers. They are the mellow old wine. They are called τέλειοι, they are the nearest friends of the Lord, His intimates, that have a better understanding of His counsel: but, although thus highly raised by God, they never divest themselves of their childlike disposition. The sense of redemption in Christ, true poverty of spirit, voluntary and constant self-denial and strong love are their characteristics. But they still stand in need of instruction and caution (an old Christian had been victorious in the fight for thirty-nine years, but was overcome in the fortieth year.) They must fight senectute contra senectutem. They have more works than words. They are engaged in ceaseless intercessions for all the people of God, and gather riches for the children (2Co_12:14). But they must he very careful not to usurp an authority and power, in virtue of which they require others blindly and unconditionally to follow and agree with them; the moment they fall into this snare they cease to be fathers, and become the destroyers of the Christlike spirit in the children.—Young men are those who are still engaged in active warfare, and have to fear most the assaults of the flesh, the world and the devil; they ought to have begun to taste the better delights [of religion] and should overcome Satan. Hence they are always prepared for the battle. He that has become a true child of God must not care for the age of youth. Can any one, by anxious care, add one cubit unto his stature [age]? He that preserves that which he has, to him shall be given more; the process of growth is imperceptible (Mar_4:28). They ought to have the spirit of power and vigilance; as valiant soldiers they must always be at their post, warring against the enemy. Their dangers are rashness, undue ardor, temerity and negligence. They must have work to do, they must destroy Babylon, but abstain from all things, and fight faithfully unto death. They must not be discouraged in the first ardor of their zeal, for that first ardor may lose its intensity. Their strength will be in proportion to their allowing their strength quietly to strike root; even Christ walked in silence and retirement during His youth, and John was in the wilderness. They must learn to enter into the mystery of godliness, abstain from their doing in order that God may work in them, that thus they may resist the πονηρός, the spoiler, who comes from without and forces his way into them, and would fain seize the youthful warriors. Hence they need circumspection and weapons (Ephesians 6).—Children are beginners in Christianity who have already tasted the paternal love of God, who receive from the Father more tokens of love, as it were, more caressing. But they must be truly born of God, have a new mind, the Spirit of adoption whereby they cry Abba, Father. Their general characteristics are these: a childlike disposition, lowliness, obedience, sincerity, joyfulness. Their childlike failings are: credulity, carelessness, rashness, inconstancy, or even wandering from the simplicity in Christ. They are strongly attached to the sweet taste of grace. They require oversight, guidance, nursing, care, keeping; they require milk until they are able to take stronger food and grow. (Here we may refer to the choral divisions among the unitas fratrum: children, older boys, single brethren, single sisters, the chorus of married people, widowers and widows, to the incipientes, proficientes and profecti of the Moravians, and to the analogies of paganism, Plato de legg. II., where the chorus of boys, of young men to the age of thirty, of men to the age of sixty, used fascinatingly to implant the true and the good into the minds of the people in songs, and Plutarch lacon. instit. according to which, among the Spartans, old men used to sing: “Once we were vigorous youths;” men, “We are so; if thou desirest it, try;” and the boys, “Some day we shall even be better”).—Love is the noblest power in man, which he ought not to waste on unworthy objects, but he ought to love God only.—The world is set before men to try them, whether they will lay hold of it or of heavenly things.—The objects of our desires, as far as they are creatures, are not evil in themselves (1Ti_4:4; 1Co_10:26), but the passionate desire of them is evil, and of the evil spirit. The excusatio of worldlings is: “it is natural, it is innocent.” That is to lay the responsibility of sin on God.—Worldly-mindedness and religion are incompatible. There are, indeed, many degrees of this worldly-mindedness and fondness of worldly pleasures, but this much is certain: 1. Those in whom this fondness is strong and supreme, to whom non-gratification causes anger and a blank, are without the divine life. 2. Every worldly pleasure, though indifferent of itself, becomes sin if it leads astray from God, and has to be enjoyed without God. 3. In proportion to the growth of religion is the decrease of a mind and taste for worldly lusts, and vice versa.—It is disgraceful in clergymen [Germ. Geistliche, a technical term for clergymen, of which the English divines is the nearest approximation, or we may also say “spiritual and secular,” but, of course, without any reference to the Roman Catholic use of these terms—M.], who ought to be the opposite of the worldly, to exhibit worldliness in the bias of their mind and conversation.—What comes of the transitoriness of the world and of the things which lust desires? What harm does it do to the worldly? 1. Even in respect of this earthly life it is painful and humiliating to take pleasure in enjoyments which are wholly idle and transient, and leave behind them nothing that is refreshing or ennobling, but, perhaps, something that will fill the mind with gloom, paralyze and deject the spirit—a melancholy blank. 2. This holds good still more in respect of the life to come. The objects will cease, but not the desire, which will then lack the instruments and means of its gratification. Painful condition. Such a soul will then behold itself in its miserable emptiness and vileness. Therefore consider the transitoriness and consequences of every sinful lust. (Oriental saying: The treasures of the world are so constituted that they will deprive thee of life, if thou gatherest them).—
Neander:—It is not part of the nature of the love of God that we must retire from the world and worldly things, but rather that we should use them according to the purpose which God has assigned to all men, to His glory.
Besser:—The forgiveness of sins is the bread on which the great and the small, Apostles and malefactors, the wise and the illiterate, kings and beggars (kings as beggars, and beggars as kings), live in the kingdom of God, even as the fourth and fifth petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are significantly joined together by and.
Johann Bugenhagen’s motto was: “Si Christum bene scis, satis est, si cetera nescis: si Christum nescis, nil est, si cetera discis.”
Leo the Great:—There are two kinds of love from which proceeds every lust according to its kind: man, who cannot exist without love, loves either God or the world.
Spener.—This either—or is an established thing which will never yield the place to an as well—as. To contribute one cent to ungodliness is as much as to give up to it the whole. St. Bernard calls pride the arch-artificer of fraud, and the true fountain of vice, the tinder of sin, the rust of virtues, the moth of holiness, the beguiler of hearts, that turns medicine into poison, and cordials into stupefying draughts. A soul has nothing in eternity but what it has gathered in time.
Nitzsch:—The principal question of the divine word addressed to fathers: Do you know Him that is from the beginning? Let us consider: 1. Why this question is peculiarly suited to the aged? The excellency and glory of old age is experience, its natural avocation to gather and to have gathered it, its supreme requirement, to have wisdom by and in experience. How much more important is it to have seen and felt a thing, to have shared its suffering, than merely to have heard of it! 2. Which knowledge does it speak of? The First and the Last has been revealed in the centre of history, He by whom and for whom all things consist; time has become conscious of eternity. Humanity has been raised from profound misery to high glory. This knowledge compensates the eye for every unavoidable want of light, supplies the solution of many riddles, finds the kernel of many experiences, marks the holy line of human effort, cherishes the sweet hope of beholding [God], and thinks well done that which God doeth. 3. The great monition and the glorious consolation contained therein. Many things improve by age, but not the fundamental error, erring from God. Self-will and unbelief do not break spontaneously by mere events; the secret will of the natural man grows to a fearful height and resoluteness; rather die in sins than present oneself blind and naked, miserable and poor before the only Mediator, the Conqueror on the cross. Do you still know Him, do you know Him again? Be overcome and ye shall conquer; His knowledge rejuvenates you like eagles, makes you wise, and crowns all knowledge and experience with faith in the eternal words. The monition of the divine word to young men that they have overcome the wicked one. Regard it—1, as a congratulation on their participation in the victory of Christ, but also as a threefold test-inquiry of the reality of their Christianity. After the victory of Christ, the time of the mere doubtful struggle between the death and life of mankind, the time of invincible sin, of the immeasurable progress of corruption, belongs to the remote past. If you fear already, or are still afraid in this world, be of good courage and know that you enter into a reconciled world, and stand in eternal peace, and partake of a happiness and liberty that have not to be fought for and devised, but may be seized and enjoyed in true faith. But here you have to inquire after faith in this word,—since the tendency prevails not to believe that which was believed by the fathers; many, all believe to indemnify themselves for childlike faith with the conceits of the unvanished beauty of the world, of the power of the mind of man and of the innocence and goodness of the heart of man,—to inquire after the knowledge of this truth, after the decision and conversion of the heart, whether that will reigns supreme which says, How should I do this great evil and sin against my God? whether you are consciously or unconsciously under the jurisdiction of the prince of this world, and unfitted for the true work of your calling. … 2. As a call to resistance, and at the same time as a promise of assistance. This bears on your bravery, your honour, your independence, ye that are in such hurry to be men. There are many adversaries from without that reappear again and again; fight the invisible battles in your souls. It is good for a man to have worn the yoke in his youth, but how much better this yoke; thus you will gain a clear and pure view of your future, thus you spend the time of your transitory youth for the purpose of securing eternal youth, thus you care to-day for to-morrow and ever, even unto the judgment; all things are yours.
Hast thou broken with the world? 1. Art thou perhaps still wholly entangled in its lust? 2. Art thou convinced that it is impossible to love God and the world at the same time? 3. Dost thou daily fight victoriously against the lust of the world tempting thee?
What is the Christian’s relation to the world? 1. He knows that its lust, without any exception, is sin (1Jn_2:16), and such sin as is incompatible with the Christian profession (1Jn_2:15), and on this very account 2. He shuns and flies it (v.15).
Consider how little the love of the world comports with sincere conversion towards God. 1. The latter imposes renunciation of the world and its lust as a necessary condition. 2. It affords strength for overcoming the world. 3. And is itself a continued combat with the temptations of the world.
The infamy of a Christian being the slave of worldly lust. 1. He thereby enters the service of worldly vanity, 2. becomes the enemy of God, and 3. will perish with the world (L. in “Gesetz und Zeugniss” for 1860).—
[Ezekiel Hopkins:—1Jn_2:15. “For these things (Pleasures, Riches, Honours), though they make a fair and gaudy show, yet it is all but show and appearance. As bubbles, blown into the air, will represent great variety of orient and glittering colours, not, as some suppose, that there are any such really there, but only they appear so to us, through a false reflection of light cast upon them: so truly this world, this earth on which we live, is nothing else but a great bubble blown up by the breath of God in the midst of the air, where it now hangs. It sparkles with ten thousand glories: not that they are so in themselves, but only they seem so to us through the false light by which we look upon them. If we come to grasp it, it breaks and leaves nothing but wind and disappointment in our hands: as histories report of the fruits that grow near the Dead sea, where once Sodom and Gomorrah stood, they appear very fair and beautiful to the eye, but if they be crushed, turn straight to smoke and ashes.”
There is nothing in the world vain in respect of its natural being or of God the Creator—but all the vanity that is in worldly things, is only in respect of the sin and folly of man. [Augustine: “Utendum est hoc mundo, non fruendum; ut invisibilia Dei, per ea quæ facta sunt, intelligantur; hoc est, ut de temporalibus æterna capiantur.”—M.].
The vanity of the world appears in:
1. That all its glory and splendour depend merely on opinion and fancy.
2. In its deceitfulness and treachery. It is not only vanity, but a lying vanity.
3. As all things in the world are lying vanities, so are they all vexatious. “Uncertain comforts but most certain crosses.”
4. A little cross will embitter great comforts—another mark of the vanity of the world.
5. The longer we enjoy any worldly thing, the more flat and insipid doth it grow.
6. All the pleasure of the world is nothing else but a tedious repetition of the same things.
7. The world can stand us in no stead, when we have the greatest need of support and comfort.
8. All things in the world are vain, because they are unsuitable.
The soul is spiritual and immortal, worldly things are material and perishable.
Its wants are spiritual—but the world supplies only material wants.
9. The vanity of the world appears in its inconstancy and fickleness and—
10. In that it is altogether unsatisfactory.—M.].
[Barrow:—The world is an enemy, an irreconcilable enemy to our salvation. The World, that is, the wicked principles, the bad customs, the naughty conversation and example which commonly prevail here among men; alluring to evil and deterring from good; the cares also, the riches, the pleasures, the glories of the world, which possess or distract the minds, satiate and cloy the desires, employ all the affections and endeavours, take up the time of men; all in the world which fasteneth our hearts to earth, and to those low transitory things; or which sink them down toward hell and which detain them from soaring toward heaven.
The world passeth away and the desire (ἐπιθυμία) thereof; whatever seemeth most lovely and desirable in the world is very flitting; however, our desire and our enjoyment thereof must suddenly cease. Imagine a man, therefore, possessed of all worldly goods, armed with power, flourishing in credit, flowing with plenty, swimming in all delight (such as were sometime Priamus, Polycrates, Crœsus, Pompey) yet since he is withal supposed a man, and mortal, subject both to fortune and death, none of those things can he reasonably confide or much satisfy himself in; they may be violently divorced from him by fortune, they must naturally be loosed from him by death; the closest union here cannot last longer than till death us depart; wherefore no man upon such account can truly call, or, if he consider well, heartily esteem himself happy; a man cannot hence receive profit or content from any labour he taketh under the sun. (Ecc_1:3 sqq.)—M.].
[On ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου 1Jn_2:16. “It was a pertinent discourse of Cineas, dissuading Pyrrhus from undertaking a war against the Romans. Sir, saith he, when you have conquered them, what will you do next? Then Sicily is near at hand, and easy to master.—And what when you have subdued Sicily? Then we will pass over to Africa and take Carthage, which cannot long withstand us.—When these are conquered, what will be your next attempt?—Then we will fall in upon Greece and Macedon and recover what we have lost there.—Well, when all are subdued, what fruit do you expect from all your victories? Then we will sit down and enjoy ourselves. Sir, replied Cineas, may we not do it now? Have you not already a kingdom of your own? and he that cannot enjoy himself with a kingdom, cannot with the world.” Plutarch in Vita Pyrrhi.—M.].
[Pyle (1Jn_2:12-14):—The cautions I here give you ought to be equally regarded by all degrees of Christian professors. The new converts and younger Christians are to consider themselves as newly put into a state of salvation, the pardon of sin, and the favour of God, through Jesus Christ; and to endeavour to confirm themselves in it by the careful practice of true Christian virtue. Such as are come to more maturity in their profession and are in the strength and vigour of their age, have a great advantage, and ought to employ the utmost of that vigour in resisting the strongest temptations of the devil, and perfecting their conquest over him and all his wicked instruments. And the aged Christians cannot but have so dear a knowledge of God, and the revelation of His will by Jesus Christ, during the long season from their first conversion, that it would be utterly inexcusable for them to be wanting in their essential duties or be drawn from them by the false teachers.—M.].
[1Jn_2:12. Simeon, C., The different growth and privileges of God’s children. Works xx. 393.
1Jn_2:13-14. Marshall, N., Peculiar temptations attending every stage of life, with the special advantages and counter-motives that are found in each, considered particularly with regard to old age.
The temptations that most endanger our first stage of life, with the duties most incumbent upon us in that early period, and the motives to discharge them.
Peculiar temptations treated in reference to such as are in the bloom and vigour of life. Sermons, 2:433, 459, 485.
1Jn_2:15. Fuller, Thos., An ill match well broken off. Joseph’s party-coloured coat.
1Jn_2:15-17. Bossuet, Traité de la Concupiscence. Œuvres, xi 1Jn_2:26.—M.].
Footnotes:
[17][1Jn_2:12. ἀφέωνται, Perf. Pass. formed after the Perfect Active ἀφέωκα, here and Mat_9:2-5; Mar_2:5; Luk_5:20; Luk_5:23; Luk_7:47; Syriac=remissa sunt, “have been forgiven you” more correct than E. V. “are forgiven you.”—M.]
[18][Cod. Sin. reads τὸ πονηρόν.—M.]
[19]1Jn_2:13. ἔγραψα, A. B. C., Cod. Sin. The reading γράφω is without critical authority, and opposed to the ructure of this series of sentences.
[20]1Jn_2:14. τὸ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς in B., which might allude to 1Jn_1:1, is evidently a slip of the pen, since the same Codex reads τὸν in 1Jn_2:13.
[21][1Jn_2:15. μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ=nor the things in the world, more correct than “the things that are in the world” E.V.—M.]
[22]τοῦ πατρὸς, B. [G. K.] Cod. Sin.; the best verss. Fathers [Oec. Theophyl.—M.]. The reading Θσοῦ A. C. must yield the place to the former authorities, and to the context 1Jn_2:16.
[23][1Jn_2:16. ὅτι=because, so German.—M.]
[24][1Jn_2:17. αὐτοῦ after ἐπιθυμία, although wanting in A. and cancelled by Griesbach; is the true reading. The difficulty readily accounts for the omission.—M].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12–15 little children--Greek, "little sons," or "dear sons and daughters";…
little children--Greek, "little sons," or "dear sons and daughters"; not the same Greek as in Jo1 2:13, "little children," "infants" (in age and standing). He calls ALL to whom he writes, "little sons" (Jo1 2:1, Greek; Jo1 2:28; Jo1 3:18; Jo1 4:4; Jo1 5:21); but only in Jo1 2:13, Jo1 2:18 he uses the term "little children," or "infants." Our Lord, whose Spirit John so deeply drank into, used to His disciples (Joh 13:33) the term "little sons," or dear sons and daughters; but in Joh 21:5, "little children." It is an undesigned coincidence with the Epistle here, that in John's Gospel somewhat similarly the classification, "lambs, sheep, sheep," occurs.
are forgiven--"have been, and are forgiven you": ALL God's sons and daughters alike enjoy this privilege.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv12, 14, 15 12-14. Second interlude. See note, 1Jn_2:7. Little children here,…
12-14. Second interlude. See note, 1Jn_2:7. Little children here, as in 1Jn_2:1, means our apostle’s entire audience. And the use of the term seems to have suggested forthwith the purpose of addressing the three ages—fathers, middle-aged, and youths—and by way of emphasis he goes over the triad twice. The little children of 1Jn_2:12 is a different word from the little children, or youths, of 1Jn_2:13; 1Jn_2:18.
12. I write—I am writing. While I write, my mind surveys your different ages of natural and Christian life blended in one.
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Sins are forgiven—The entire Church is addressed on the common basis of being justified Christians, 13. Fathers—Some of them, perhaps, remembered when Paul and Apollos first preached in Ephesus.
Known… beginning—When Ephesus first received the Gospel. As if this were of itself enough, he repeats precisely the same words to the fathers in the second triad in the next verse.
Young men—Thus the three ages must be held to cover the whole of life. The Greek word extends to forty years of life and over. But an old man, like our apostle, makes his youngers younger than they are, and these young men were doubtless young until they became old. The term would be rightly understood of middle-age.
Because—To each age he gives its suited motto. In next triad the young men have a fuller certificate. They are strong, are firm and permanent, have overcome the devil. They may not be reposing in their laurels, like the fathers, but they are robust, and are in fact victors in their still enduring battle.
Little children—Youths would seem to be too old a term to be equivalent to the Greek, unless we remember the above-named habit of the aged man. The word is plainly intended to cover all less than the young, or rather middle-aged, men. And both here and in 1Jn_2:18 the knowledge imputed to them is too high for a mere child.
Known the Father—Namely, the divine Father of all; who is truly known through Jesus Christ. They were the true Gnostics.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv12–15 12–14. Threefold Statement of Reasons for Writing
12–14. Threefold Statement of Reasons for Writing
“Hitherto St John has stated briefly the main scope of his Epistle. He has shewn what is the great problem of life, and how the Gospel meets it with an answer and a law complete and progressive, old and new. He now pauses, as it were to contemplate those whom he is addressing more distinctly and directly, and to gather up in a more definite form the charge which is at once the foundation and the end of all he writes” (Westcott).
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These verses have given rise to much discussion (1) as to the different classes addressed, (2) as to the meaning of the change of tense, from ‘I write’ to ‘I wrote’ or ‘have written’.
(1) It will be observed that we have two triplets, each consisting of little children, fathers and young men. There is a slight change of wording in the Greek not apparent in the English, the word for ‘little children’ in the first triplet (τεκνία) being not the same as in the second (παιδία). But this need not make us give a different interpretation in each case. ‘Little children’ throughout the Epistle, whether expressed as in 1Jn_2:14; 1Jn_2:18 (παιδία), or as in 1Jn_2:1; 1Jn_2:12; 1Jn_2:28, 1Jn_3:7; 1Jn_3:18, 1Jn_4:4, 1Jn_5:21 (τεκνία), probably means the Apostle’s readers generally, and has nothing to do with age or with standing in the Christian community. It indicates neither those who are of tender years, nor those who are young in the faith. It is a term of affection for all the Apostle’s ‘dear children’. But this is not the case with either ‘fathers’ or ‘young men’. These terms are probably in each triplet to be understood of the older and younger men among the Christians addressed. This fully accounts for the order in each triplet; first the whole community, then the old, then the young. If ‘little children’ had reference to age, we should have had either ‘children, youths, fathers’, or ‘fathers, youths, children’. There is, however, something to be said for the view that all S. John’s readers are addressed in all three cases, the Christian life of all having analogies with youth, manhood, and age; with the innocence of childhood, the strength of prime, and the experience of full maturity.
(2) The change of tense cannot be explained with so much confidence. But an important correction of reading must first be noticed. We ought not to read with A. V. ‘I write’ four times and then ‘I have written’ twice: but with R. V. ‘I write’ thrice and then ‘I have written’ or ‘I wrote’ thrice. This correction confirms the explanation given above of the different classes addressed. The following interpretations of the change from the present to the aorist have been suggested. 1. ‘I write’ refers to the Epistle, ‘I wrote’ to the Gospel which it accompanies. The Apostle first gives reasons why he is writing this letter to the Church and to particular portions of it; and then gives reasons, partly the same and partly not, why he wrote the Gospel to which it makes such frequent allusions. On the whole this seems most satisfactory. It gives a thoroughly intelligible meaning to each tense and accounts for the abrupt change. 2. ‘I write’ refers to this Epistle; ‘I wrote’ to a former Epistle. But of any former Epistle we have no evidence whatever. 3. ‘I write’ refers to the whole Epistle; ‘I wrote’ to the first part down to 1Jn_2:11. But would S. John have first said that he wrote the whole letter for certain reasons, and then said that he wrote a portion of it for much the same reasons? Had ‘I wrote’ preceded ‘I write’, and had the reasons in each triplet been more different, this explanation would have been more satisfactory. 4. ‘I write’ refers to what follows, ‘I wrote’ to what precedes. This is a construction louche indeed! The objection urged against the preceding explanation applies still more strongly. 5. ‘I write’ is written from the writer’s point of view, ‘I wrote’ from the reader’s point of view: the latter is the epistolary aorist, like scripsi or scribebam in Latin (comp. Php_2:25; Php_2:28; Phm_1:12, and especially 19 and 21). But is it likely that S. John would make three statements from his own stand-point, and then repeat them from his readers’ stand-point? And if so, why make any change in them? 6. The repetition is made for emphasis. This explains the repetition, but not the change of tense. Hence ‘What I have written, I have written’ (Joh_19:22), and ‘Rejoice … and again I will say, rejoice’ (Php_4:4) are not analogous; for there the same tense is repeated. 7. S. John may have left off writing at the end of 1Jn_2:13, and then on resuming may have partly repeated himself from the new point of time, saying ‘I wrote’ where he had previously said ‘I write’. This is conceivable, but is a little fine-drawn.—Without, therefore, confidently affirming that it is the right explanation, we fall back upon the one first stated, as intelligible in itself and more satisfactory than the others.
little children] All his readers; as in 1Jn_2:1; 1Jn_2:28, 1Jn_3:7; 1Jn_3:18, &c.
because your sins are forgiven you] Some would render ‘that your sins are forgiven you’; and so in each of these sentences substituting ‘that’ for ‘because’. This is grammatically quite possible, but is otherwise highly improbable: comp. 1Jn_2:21. S. John is not telling them what he is writing, but why he writes it. The forgiveness of sins is the very first condition of Christian morals (1Jn_1:7); therefore he reminds them all of this first.
for His name’s sake] Of course Jesus Christ’s. It was by believing on His Name that they acquired the right to become children of God (Joh_1:12). ‘The Name of Jesus Christ’ is not a mere periphrasis for Jesus Christ. Names in Scripture are constantly given as marks of character possessed or of functions to be performed. This is the case with all the Divine Names. The Name of Jesus Christ indicates His attributes and His relations to man and to God. It is through these that the sins of S. John’s dear children have been forgiven.
12–28. The Things and Persons to be Avoided
These are summed up under two heads: i. The World and the Things in the World (15–17); ii. Antichrists (18–26). The section begins with a threefold statement of the happy experiences which those addressed have had in the Gospel, and gives these as a reason for their being addressed (12–14), and ends with an exhortation to abide in Christ as the best safeguard from the dangers against which the Apostle has been warning them (27, 28).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On v12 (7) THE THINGS THEY MUST NOT LOVE IF THEY…
(7) THE THINGS THEY MUST NOT LOVE IF THEY WALKED IN THE LIGHT (1Jn_2:12-17).—The solemnity of the thoughts of 1Jn_2:9; 1Jn_2:11 is too much for the warm heart of the Apostle. He cannot bear even to seem to suggest that his “dear little children” are shrouded in the gloomy horrors of moral darkness, haunted by the faithful memories of their sins, and enticed hither and thither by the malevolent spirits of evil. He will warn them with the most tender and pitiful affection against the wicked one, the world, the flesh, the follies and vanities of the human heart; but first he will show them frankly what he thinks of them, what he hopes of them, the trust he places in them, the grounds which he takes for granted in writing to them.
(12) I write unto you, little children.—The arrangement of these triplets should be prefaced by saying that the last “I write,” in 1Jn_2:13, is, according to the best reading, “I wrote,” or “I have written;” and that the “little children” of 1Jn_2:12 is the same word as that which he used in 1Jn_2:1 for the whole class of his readers, and is therefore quite general, but that the “little children” of 1Jn_2:13 is a different, word, meaning children in age. So we get:—
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I write.I wrote.1. All readers.1. Children in age. [Suggested, according to the perfect simplicity of St. John’s style, by the term used in the first set for his readers generally.]2. Fathers.2. Fathers.3. Youths.3. Youths.
Reasons.1. Forgiveness.1. Knowledge of the Father.2. Knowledge of Christ. 2. Knowledge of Christ.3. Victory.3. Strength, perseverance, victory.
Some have thought the second triplet an explanatory note that has crept into the text; others that “I write refers to what he is doing at the moment, “I wrote” the view they would take when they read what he had written. It seems better, however, if we allow the Gospel to have been written first, to refer “I am writing” to the Epistle; “I did write” to the Gospel.
Because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake.—Rather, have been forgiven. When Christ expired on the cross, the sins of all were forgiven who should in after-time believe and carry on their repentance towards perfection. The process is realised in the soul when it wakes up to a sense of love of the Saviour through faith.
(13) Fathers.—The heads of families.
Him that is from the beginning.—There can be little doubt that this means the same Person as the subject of “His name’s sake.” (Comp. Joh_1:1; Joh_8:58; Joh_17:5; Knowledge of Christ is assigned in both cases as the reason for addressing the elder members of his audience, because fully to understand the work, the doctrine, the example of Christ, is a work fitted for mature thought. (Comp. 1Co_3:1-2.)
Young men.—They might be regarded more as still engaged in the work of settling their character, forming their habits, disciplining their inclinations, confirming the choice which all must make for themselves between good and evil. (Comp. 2Ti_2:22.) St. John is not here addressing those who have failed in the struggle and not repented, but those who have got the better of such temptations, or are in process of getting it.
The wicked one.—Comp. 1Jn_3:12; 1Jn_5:18; Mat_13:19; Eph_6:16.)
(14) Because ye have known.—To those who have once begun to understand Christ, the topic must always be delightful and interesting.
Because ye are strong.—For the reasons mentioned before, young men have more special need of strength. (Comp. Psa_119:9.) This power can only come through the presence of the message and teaching of God in their hearts, which will be brought by faith in Christ, acceptance of His redemption, and reverential study of His example. When Christ has thus dwelt in their minds, then the victory is won, and the spirits of evil can no longer entice them.
(15) Love not the world.—Having thus affectionately expressed his hopes about each class of them, the last of the Apostles is freer to express that warning which was suggested to his mind by the mournful picture of 1Jn_2:11. If they would not walk in darkness—if they would be where the true Light shineth—then they must not love the world. What does “the world” mean? In Act_17:24 it meant the universe; in Joh_1:9, perhaps more distinctly, the earth; in 1Jn_2:2 the sum total of mankind; in Joh_8:23 that moral order, to be found in this spot of creation, which is antagonistic to God. Thus it became a phrase for all such inventions, plans, customs, thoughts, and estimates of mankind as are not in harmony with the will and purpose of God. It is ridiculous to suppose that St. John intended to condemn the love either of natural philosophy; or of the scenery of that creation which God saw to be very good, and which sin has been unable to injure; or of all mankind, who are His children. No created thing is evil in itself; the evil lies in the use which man makes of it. We must remember that our Lord said, “I am the Light of the World” (Joh_8:12), so that none of the phases of the meaning of the word can be essentially evil, except where it implies man’s own ungodly creations. The world which is not to be loved is the sphere of rebellion, caprice, ambition, vanity, pride, avarice, forgetfulness of God, self-pleasing, sensuous desires and interests, connivance with standards of thought and action antagonistic to the will of God. To take one example: Christ declared all Christians brothers; any respect for rank and wealth beyond a conscientious “bowing in the house of Rimmon” is a sign of the forbidden affection.
The love of the Father is the true posture of the soul towards God. If the soul is evenly balanced between love of God and of the world it is negative and colourless. If the balance incline towards the things that distract from the pure and simple walk with God, then the emotion for Him has died away; if the balance be for Him, “the expulsive power of the new affection” makes the contrary attractions insignificant and increasingly powerless.
(16) All that is in the world.—The essence, the kernel of this sphere showing itself in countless ways.
The lust of the flesh—i.e., that proceeds from the earthly nature; all desire taking possession of the soul as a motive for thought and action which does not arise from principles in harmony with the will of God.
The lust of the eyes—i.e., of which the eyes are the seat; all delight in objects living or inanimate apart from their moral and religious importance; personal beauty, for instance, considered otherwise than as an index of a Christ-like soul. (Comp. Joh_7:24; Joh_8:15; 2Co_5:16; Jas_2:1.) Our Lord’s, introspection was of moral qualities in Mar_10:21.
The pride of life.—The Greek word is only used besides in the New Testament in Jas_4:16. The phrase means a boastful, ostentatious attitude in regard to the good things of this life allotted by God to be spent in His service. All living up to a supposed social position instead of as the responsible steward of undeserved bounties, is hereby condemned. Of this any social organism existing for pleasure instead of for moral or religious ends might be considered illustrative.
(17) The world passeth away.—No reasonable man can set his affections on what is in its very essence perishable; for the perishable must be ever disappointing, and can in no sense satisfy. It is only passion, and the madness of folly, and the contagion of accumulated examples, that influence the soul towards what can only create the agonising ache of a growing void.
And the lust thereof.—Of all the long succession of impulses excited by the world, nothing remains but the injury which they have inflicted.
But he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.—There is no permanence but that of defeat and failure in what is in rebellion to the Supreme Author and Ruler of all things. But that which has continuously derived all its sustenance from Him, must have absorbed from Him the “bright shoots” of that “everlastingness” which is His. Everything that is good is a part of Him, and can no more fade than He can. It is by being in harmony with this undeviating tendency of righteousness to victory that real happiness discovers its own secret. (Comp. Joh_10:28-29; 1Co_7:31; Jas_1:10; 1Pe_1:24.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv12–15 Vers. 12-14. Before passing on to the second thing…
Vers. 12-14. Before passing on to the second thing which walking in the light excludes, viz. love of the world (verses 15-17), the apostle twice makes a threefold address, first stating why he writes grafw, and secondly why he wrote e]graya, to the three classes named. This suggests several questions.
(1) What is the difference between "I write" (or, "am writing") and "I wrote" (or, "have written;" for this is a case where the English perfect may represent the Greek aorist)? Five answers are given.
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(a) The change is made for emphasis: "I write; I wrote; there is nothing more to be said." But in this case the past tense should come first: "I wrote; I write it again." Moreover, we should expect the perfect rather than the aorist, as in o gegrafa gegrafa.
(b) "I write" refers to what follows; " I wrote," to what precedes. And some have even tried to find out the three different portions in each part of the Epistle; e.g., " I write to you, little children"; (1Jn_2:15-17) "to you, fathers"; (1Jn_2:18-27) "to you, young men": (1Jn_2:28-29; 1Jn_3:1-22) "I wrote to you, children"; (1Jn_1:5-7) "to you, fathers" (chapter 1:8-2:2); "to you, young men". (1Jn_2:3-11) But this is fanciful and very arbitrary; and in this case also the past tense should come first: "I have written thus far to you; again I proceed to write to you.
(c) "I write" refers to the whole Epistle; " I wrote," to what precedes. This answer has the sanction of the "Speaker"s Commentary;" but it seems to be quite frivolous. What could induce St. John first of all to tell each class that he writes the whole Epistle to them, and then to tell them that he wrote the first part of it to them? There would be little enough sense in first saying that he wrote the beginning to them, and then that he writes the whole to them; but there is no sense in the former statement if it comes after the latter.
(d) "I am writing" is from St. John"s point of view, as he pens the growing letter. "I wrote" is from the readers" point of view, as they peruse the completed letter. But what is gained by this change of standpoint? Is it probable that St. John would make three distinct addresses in the position of the writer of the Epistle, and then solemnly repeat them in the position of the recipients of it?
(e) The Epistle is written as a companion to the Gospel: therefore "I write" refers to the Epistle, which he is in the act of composing; "I wrote," to the Gospel, which lies completed before him, and on which the Epistle serves as a commentary. This seems to be the most satisfactory explanation (see on chapter 1:4).
(2) Who are indicated by the three classes? In the first triplet, teknia, as elsewhere in the Epistle (verses 1, 28; 1Jn_3:18 1Jn_4:4, 1Jn_4:5, 1Jn_4:21) refers to his readers as a whole, of whom patrev and neaniskoi are two component divisions. This is probably the case in the second triplet also, although the change from teknia to paidia renders this a little doubtful (see on verse 13).
(3) Does the difference between "fathers" and "young men" refer to age as men or age as Christians? Probably the former. In both Gospel and Epistle St. John writes to mature and well-instructed Christians. The following table will illustrate the view taken:
I write this Epistle:Reasons for writing it:
1. To all of you. You have been forgiven.
2. To the old among you You have knowledge of the Word.
3. To the young among you. You have conquered the evil one.
I wrote my Gospel:Reasons for writing it:
1. To all of you (?). You have knowledge of the Father.
2. To the old among you You have knowledge of the Word.
3. To the young among you. You have strength, have God"s revelation in your hearts, and have conquered the evil one. I am writing to you, little children (see on verse 1), because, etc. Beyond reasonable doubt, oti, is "because," not "that," in verses 1214; it gives the reason for his writing, not the substance of what he has to say (cf. verse 21). For his Name"s sake must refer to Christ, not only because of the context, but also of the instrumental dia (cf. 1Jn_3:23 1Jn_5:13; Joh_1:12) and Christ"s Name means his character, especially as Saviour. Because they have already partaken of the iJlasmov (verse 2), and have had their sins washed away in the blood of Christ, (1Jn_1:7) therefore he writes to them this Epistle. Note the perfects throughout, indicating the permanent result of past action: ajfewntai ejgnwkate nenikhkate.
Vers. 12-14.
Little ones," "young men," and fathers.
Here the thread of thought is broken. The apostle, instead of continuing his theme, turns for a little to those to whom he wrote and is writing; he recognizes the difference between the age, standing, and capacity of his readers, and reminds them that in each case his writing has had and still has a specific reason and intent. TopicThe Word of God permanently suited alike for the young and the old.
I THERE ARE TO BE FOUND IN THE CHURCH WIDE DIVERSITIES IN AGE AND EXPERIENCE. There are, at least apparently, three classes specified the children, the young men, and the fathers. The children are specified by two distinctive terms children," "little ones." "Little children" as sustaining a common relation; "little ones" as being equally feeble and helpless (cf. Westcott, in loc. ). There is room, however, for difference in opinion as to whether the apostle aged and mature as he himself was at the time of writing does notinclude all under the term "little children" here, as he certainly does in the first verse of this chapter. But it appears to us to be otherwise, and that the apostle afterwards varies the phraseology, saying "little ones," that he might make it clear that he, in this particular case, means "little ones" in age, 1. e. as concerning the Christian life. That there were children in the early Churches appears clearly indicated in the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. And certainly in the Churches there have been, in all periods, the little ones, who have newly come to the faith; the young men, whose glory is in their strength; the fathers, whose glory is their ripeness in Christian experience and their attainments in saving knowledge.
II THESE DIVERSITIES OF AGE ARE RECOGNIZED BY THE APOSTLE. In the fact of the apostle thus distinctly setting each class before him, and specifying each, we see a graciously designed adaptation of the sacred writings alike to young and old. And also in the specific reason given in each case.
1. John writes to the "little ones," because their "sins are forgiven" for thesake of Christ, and because they have "known the Father." The most glorious fact, forgiveness, and the most blessed relationship, fatherhood, these, though deep enough and high enough for the researches of aneternity, are yet simple enough for babes in Christ to exult rapturously therein.
1. He writes to the "young men," because they "are strong," etc. The gloryof a young man is his strength. High ideals, ardent pursuit, brave daring, these are the delight of young men. And how abundant is the scope afforded in the teachings of the Word for the abandonment of all their energies to the noblest objects!
2. He writes to the "fathers," because they have "known him that is fromthe beginning;" i.e., in the ripeness of their attainment they have learnt the glory of Christ as the Eternal Word, and have come to see how the whole course of human history is bound up in him. Note: The fathers in Christ have gone on learning of Christ ever since they were little ones; the "little ones," consequently, should never be pressed too hard, nor be expected to see all that they will come to see by-and-by. Loyalty and docility should be expected of them; but not maturity of knowledge and of wisdom. In the Bible there is milk for the babes, as well as strong meat for those of full age.
III THE APOSTLE REPEATEDLY PUTS THE DIVINE TRUTH DOWN IN WRITING, THAT IT MAY BE A PERMANENT DIRECTORY TO ALL. Grafw e]graya. "I am writing I wrote." (For the varied possible hypotheses on these words, 1.e. whether John refers to a previous letter, etc., see Exposition; also Westcott, in loc. ) The point here worthy of being dwelt upon is the gracious foresight, which, seeing the danger of the future ages to the faith of men, arranged that the truth should be repeatedly committed to writing, and so committed that in the after-years there should be something for all for the little ones, the young men, and the fathers to which, in all perils, seductions, and bewilderments, whether of doctrine or of practice, they may perpetually appeal, as the standard alike for truth and for duty (cf. Php_3:1; 2Pe_3:1, 2Pe_3:2; verse 26).
IV THE TRUTH THUS PERMANENTLY RECORDED IS SUCH, AS WHEN RIGHTLY USED, WILL LEAD ON TO FURTHER ADVANCES IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
1. Are there those who are but babes in Christ, and who are just takingtheir first feeble steps in Zion"s pathway? in the glorious tact of which they are here reminded there is the noblest inspiration to progress. They are addressed
(1) because their sins are forgiven; and
(2) because they can rejoice in the Father"s love as theirs.
How great the achievement expressed in the first! How vast the possession pointed out in the second! Enough for them to rejoice in even at the outset of their Christian life with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. A treasure indeed to start with. They may well "sing in the ways of the Lord," hold on their way, and pass from more to more.
1. There are the young men, who glory in their energy, in whom the Wordabideth, and who have in Divine might overcome the wicked one. They are addressed in the book, and a grand field is opened up for their energies and a trial ground for all their valour, as they are bidden to fight the good fight of faith and are cautioned against the antichrists of every age. Here may they learn how to bear the shield and to wield the sword; to step forth to war, having their feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, sure to overcome in the strength of the great Captain of salvation.
2. There are the fathers, too, who in their maturity of life and love arelearning the glory of their Redeemer as the First and the Last, as over the creation of God, "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." Here are disclosures of the Redeemer"s glory in which they too may luxuriate; so that, let them become as ripe as they may, they will still find the teachings of the book far ahead of them. Yes; it is even so. As John thought of all in writing this Epistle; so, through the Spirit, in both Old and New Testaments there will be found simple teachings for the little ones, manlier words for robust energy, riper truths for those in the fullness of grace and knowledge. All, all may go to the book. It will give pictures for the child to look at, a shield and sword which the warrior may wield, and a pillow on which the aged and worn-out veteran may peacefully breathe his last.
Vers. 12-14.
Seasons of life and their appropriate spiritual experiences.
write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you," etc. Our text teaches:
1. That the revelations of redemptive truth are adapted to every season of human life. St. John writes to little children, to young men, and to fathers. To each of these classes the Bible has much to say, and much that is appropriate to each class. The Bible is the book for the little child, for the venerable sage, and for all the intermediate seasons of life.
2. That there should be an appropriate relation between the physical seasons and the spiritual experiences of human life. Some of these seasons and experiences are mentioned in our text; and to these we now turn our attention.
I AS EXPERIENCE COMMON TO ALL CHRISTIANS. "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his Name"s sake." In this place we regard the "little children" as addressed to all the apostle"s readers, irrespective of age. The word which he uses teknia is employed seven times in this Epistle, and always as comprehending the whole of his readers.
1. The great blessing enjoyed. "Your sins are forgiven you." This forgiveness is an accomplished fact, and is realized by the Christian as a present blessing. And how great a blessing it is! He who receives it is set free from the guilt of his sins, delivered from their condemnation, exempted from their punishment; and there is imparted to him a blessed consciousness of the favour of God love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost." Dr. Maclaren has well said, "Not putting up the rod, but taking your child to your heart, is your forgiveness And pardon is the open heart of God, full of love, unaverted by any consequences of my sin, unclosed by any of my departures from him.
2. The medium through which the blessing is obtained. "For his Name"s sake." The Name is that of Jesus Christ, the Saviour and the Anointed of God. The Name is suggestive of all his work for us and for our salvation his perfect redemptive work, with which the Father was well pleased.We have forgiveness and "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
II AN EXPERIENCE APPROPRIATE TO CHILDHOOD. "I have written unto you, little children, because ye know the Father." The word used for "children" paidia here is not the same as that in the preceding verse; and we think, with Ebrard, that the apostle does not now address all his readers, but those only who were children in age. One of the first indications of the intelligence of a child is its recognition of its father. Very early in life the heart of the child knows its father. Not as the result of teaching or reasoning, but in the natural unfolding of its powers it makes the recognition. And those who are children in the Christian life know God as their Father, not by evidences or arguments, but by the trust and love of their heart, which have been awakened through Jesus Christ. They know him as their Father, not only because they are his creatures, but by the gracious, loving, tender relations which he sustains to them, and by the existence and exercise of the filial spirit in themselves. They have "received the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father." It seems to us that "little children" in many cases apprehend and realize the Divine Fatherhood more clearly and fully than Christians of mature age; and that they do so because their faith in him is simpler and stronger.
III AS EXPERIENCE APPROPRIATE TO YOUNG MANHOOD. "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.
1. The possession of spiritual strength. "Ye are strong." Strength should characterize young manhood. Strength of body is a good thing; strength of mind is better; strength of soul is best. Spiritual strength is the strength of confidence in God, of love to God and to man, of worthy purposes, of righteous principles, and of vital accord with truth. And this strength finds expression in patient endurance, and earnest labour, and resolute resistance to wrong and battling for the right. The last aspect of this strength is probably prominent in the clause under consideration. The young men were strong in moral conflict, The interpretation is confirmed by the use of the same word in Luk_11:21," When the strong man armed," etc.; and in Heb_11:34, "Waxed valiant in fight," or, as in the Revised Version, "mighty in war." And this strength is derived through Jesus Christ. Apart from him we can do nothing. We can do all things in him that strengtheneth us. "Therefore be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
1. The possession of Divine truth. "The Word of God abideth in you." The Word of God is the revelation of his mind and will which he had made to man, with perhaps special reference to the gospel. They had received this Word, and it was prized by them; they retained it as a treasure (cf. Psa_119:162) It dwelt within them
1. as an illuminating force (cf. Psa_19:7 Psa_119:105, Psa_119:130; Pro_6:23)
2. as a regulative force (cf. Psa_37:31 Psa_119:1-11, Psa_119:101)
3. The attainment of spiritual victory. "Ye have overcome the evil one," i.e., Satan. He is the wicked one, "because the first in wickedness, because most industriously wicked, and because most obstinate and persevering in wickedness." St. John cannot mean that the young men had completely and finally vanquished Satan. He does not so readily accept and submit to defeat, but renews his attacks again and again. The apostle writes of the victory achieved in conversion. There is a sense in which all who have become new creatures in Christ Jesus are already conquerors of the wicked one. They are "delivered out of the power of darkness, and translated into the kingdom of the Son of his love" (Col_1:13; and cf. chapter 5:18). As Alford says," Whatever conflict remains for them afterwards, is with a baffled and conquered enemy.
IV AN EXPERIENCE APPROPRIATE TO MATURE MANHOOD. "I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning," i.e., Jesus Christ. (cf 1Jn_1:1) The appropriate occupation of age is not conflict, but contemplation; not stormy strife, but serene meditation; to penetrate mere deeply into the heart of truth, to get clearer and deeper visions of the Eternal and the Divine, to know more and more of.Jesus Christ, and of God in Christ. Maturity in the knowledge of Christ is becoming in Christian fathers. "The whole sum of Christian ripeness and experience is this knowledge of "thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
Let each of these classes addressed by St. John seek to realize its own appropriate experience. W.J.
Vers. 12-17.
The great danger of Christians.
I How ADDRESSED.
1. First time,
(1) Generally. "I write unto you, my little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his Name"s sake." In accordance with verse 1, we are to understand by "little children" all his readers. It is a designation expressive of affection more than of subordination. Christians are addressed according to their fundamental position. What we need first of all is to have our sins forgiven. As unforgiven, our position is fundamentally wrong; we lie under the Divine condemnation. As forgiven, our position is fundamentally right; we come into the Divine favour. The ground on account of which we are forgiven is here said to be his Name (Christ"s), i.e., what he is declared to be. Because he is declared to be Saviour, to be the Source of all atoning virtue, by believing on him as such we have our sins forgiven by the Father. Those who are thus forgiven can be appealed to against the encroachments of the world.
(2) Older section. "I write unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning." While all Christians are forgiven, they are divided into the class of the fathers and the class of the young men. There are those who have been a long time Christians. These, the fathers, are addressed as having the fruit of experience. They know him which is from the beginning, viz. Christ. They have a large amount of peculiarly Christian experience. They know him who best reveals the deep things of God, who was at the beginning, and entered into the Divine counsels about redemption. They know the love of him who, having an unbeginning existence and glory, entered into time and into the midst of sinful men, and devoted himself in shame and anguish and death the love this which passeth knowledge. Those who have attained to this experience may well be appealed to against thinking of substituting for it a more worldly experience.
(3) Younger section. "I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one." There are those who have not been a long time Christians. These, the young men, are addressed as having victory, the prize of strength. They have not had time for experience, but are in the midst of the conflicts which give rise to experience. Their adversary is here called the evil one, i.e., one who, as the great impersonation and champion of evil, heartily wishes their destruction, and seeks, by all stirrings within and solicitations from without, to compass their destruction. Especially are they exposed to his assaults as having, in their youth, strong passions and illusionary views of life, without the counterpoise of experience. But Christ has always his representatives among the young men. They have not been deterred by their powerful adversary from taking up their position on his side, and showing an active interest in his cause. These youthful victors may well be appealed to against thinking of throwing away victory for the sake of a few worldly pleasures.
2. Seceded time.
(1) Generally. "I have written unto you, little children, because ye know the Father." There is not the same Greek word here for "little children" that there is in the twelfth verse. It is a word which points to his hearers not so much as objects of his affection, as placed under his authority and care. There is not sufficient reason for destroying the symmetry of the passage, and supposing the reference to be to those who are literally little children. These are an interesting class, for whom Christ cared separately when he said, "Feed my lambs;" but they are to be regarded here as falling under the class of the young men. For even the little children may win victories over the evil one, by taking up their position on the side of Christ, and standing by his side in all that he requires of resistance to evil, and, beyond that, though their equipment is but small, of aggression on evil. Christians, both old and young, are addressed according to what essentially belongs to them. Being forgiven, they also know the Father, i.e., they have been adopted into his family, have his authority and loving care exercised over them, and are endeavouring to fulfill their duties to him as their Father. That is the basis on which their life goes forward, and they may well be appealed to against taking a worldly basis for their life.
(2) Older section "I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning." In writing to the fathers there is no change in his language. We need no new object of knowledge; for the knowledge of Christ comprehends all that we can know. What we need is to have our knowledge of him deepened, extended, cleared, ordered into a more complete whole; and this admits of endless progress. When we have known Christ for years, do we feel that we have exhausted the meaning of his words and his love? The fathers, then, may well be appealed to a second time, not to go aside, like the first human pair, to a forbidden knowledge.
(3) Younger section. "I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one." In writing to the young men, to the fact of victory he adds the conditions of victory. The immediate condition of victory is strength. The condition of strength is the indwelling of the Word of God. When Christ was in his youthful conflict he opposed a decisive word from the Old Testament to the devil"s lie. Three times he conquered by the use of the same means. Young men are to have their inexperience and rawness made up to them by their grasp of what God has spoken. The Word as a whole, and in its parts, must be in them in their memory, in their understanding, in their heart ready for use. And when the needed word is brought up clearly before them, they are rendered invulnerable. Young men who have felt this to be the secret of their strength may well be appealed to not to allow the strength they have acquired to be sapped by worldly compliance.
II HOW WARNED.
1. Worldliness forbidden. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." We must connect with the world here the idea of that which is abnormal, or separated from God. But we are not to think of the morally corrupt world, the world that lieth in the evil one. We are to think of the world of created good as apart from God; for it is represented as passing away. What, then, is to be our feeling, the feeling of all Christians for there is now no distinction of old and young or rather, what is not to be our feeling with regard to the world? The feeling which is most peremptorily vetoed is that of love. Some would say, "Love not the world too much;" what the writer of this Epistle says is, "Love it not at all." Nay, he is yet more explicit. With regard to the various things which constitute the world, as though each passed before him in succession, he says, with the same peremptoriness, "Love them not at all.
2. Worldliness incompatible with love to God. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Earthly things, such as a living, money, art, office, may be sought legitimately and worthily in connection with God. But when they are sought as complete, as ends in themselves, they become rivals to God, and love to them can only be cherished at the expense of love to God. Love to the world and love to the Father (who adopts us in Christ) are so contrary that one heart cannot contain them both.
1. Three aspects of the worldliness that cannot be traced to God. "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain-glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." We have not here all sin; for such sins as hatred of the brethren, heresy, spiritual pride,
2. are not included; we have only three aspects of one sin, viz. worldliness. "The flesh" points to that in which worldly enjoyment has its scat; "the eyes" point to means by which there is a ministering to worldly enjoyment; "life" (means of living) points to there being guarantee of worldly enjoyment. Within the flesh there is the stirring of desire for worldly enjoyment; the eyes are ministers to the flesh, presenting objects for desire. Objects not desired, but possessed beyond what we can appropriate of them for worldly enjoyment, produce a feeling of vain-glory. All this stirring within the flesh, this desiring through the eyes, this gloating over possession, has no high origin; it is not of the Father, but of the world.
3. W orldliness linked to the transient, not to the abiding. "And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." The transitoriness of the world is brought in as a dissuasive from worldliness. There is a constant flux in earthly things, and the pleasures connected with them are momentary.
But pleasures are like poppies spread You seize the flower, its bloom is shed; Or like the snowflake on the river, A moment white then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow"s lovely form, Evanishing amid the storm.
Not merely does the world pass away, but also the lust thereof. After a time our capacity for enjoyment is diminished. Those that look out at the windows are darkened; the daughters of music arc brought low; and desire fails (Ecclesiastes 12). Death severs our connection with the world, and puts an end to all earthly appetency. What is this transitoriness of the world meant to teach us? The voice which is here given to it is this, "Love not the world." If our love is fixed on the world, then the time is coming when we shall be left with a total blank. Divine wisdom counsels another course. It is to do the will of God, i.e., to believe in Christ, and to follow Christ. The recommendation of this course is that it links us to the eternal order of things. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." There are creatures that keep themselves from being drifted about in the waters by fastening themselves on to a rock; so in our mutable element we must secure fixity for our being by attaching ourselves to "him who is "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. R.F.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 15 I write unto you, little children
1Jn_2:12-14
I write unto you, little children
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I.
Christians of all ages and ranks are and should be as little children.
1. As little children are newly entered into the world, and beginning their lives, all things are new to them, so whosoever will be saved entereth into a new state by being renewed by the Holy Ghost, and participating of the Divine nature.
2. Having a new life, they look after that which will maintain and keep it up in good vigour; for all creatures that have life have something put into them which attracteth the nourishment proper to that life.
3. In regard of humility, and designs, and contrivances after greatness in the world. They that become as little children seek not after dominions and dignities and honours.
4. Innocent and harmless as a child, who, though infected with sin, and must be saved by Christ as others of grown age, yet cannot act sin.
II. Such who are as little children have obtained remission of sins for Christs names sake.
1. What is forgiveness of sins?
(1) It is a judicial action of God. One man forgiveth another; for our heavenly Father requireth that (Mat_18:35). But our forgiveness is an act of charity or duty imposed upon us. Gods forgiveness is an act of authority, as He is the Governor and Judge of the world.
(2) By which He doth freely and fully release from the guilt of all our transgressions.
(a) Freely. God doeth it, and that without any cost to us (Isa_3:3).
(b) It is full; as God pardoneth freely, so also fully, and not by halves; universally, and not a few sins only.
(c) It is a release from the guilt of our transgressions. Properly if is the obligation to punishment which God releaseth us from. A reprieve only deferreth execution, but a pardon wholly preventeth it.
(d) The object of this pardon is the penitent believer; and that faith is required (Act_10:43).
(e) This sin is forgiven without requiring satisfaction or punishment of the sinner.
2. How it is obtained.
(1) Sin, a transgression of the law, a debt, as being a wrong done against God, obliging the sinner either to repair God in point of honour, or to lie under the wrath of God for evermore; for the wages of sin is death (Rom_6:23).
(2) There is no deliverance from this debt of sin, or obligation to wrath because of sin, but by pardon and forgiveness.
(3) There is some hope of forgiveness, because God forbeareth the worst, and doth not stir up all His wrath against them. They have food, and raiment, and ease, and liberty, and friends and wealth, and honour. Everything about us proclaimeth the goodness of this God with whom we have to do (Act_14:17).
(4) Though forgiveness may be probably hoped for from Gods goodness and mercy as represented in common providence, yet till there be a satisfaction for the offence, and we may have our pardon granted with the good leave of provoked justice, the soul can have no satisfaction. The grand scruple that haunts the guilty creature is how shall God be appeased? (Mic_6:7.)
(5) It was agreeable to the honour and wisdom of God that those who would have benefit by this remedy should be sensible of the weight which is upon them, and humbly confess their sins, and with brokenness of heart sue out their pardon.
(6) It is fit also that those who would sue out their pardon in this humble and submissive way should acknowledge their Redeemer, and thankfully accept of the benefit procured by Him, and offered to them in His name; and heartily consent to His covenant to be brought home to God again, that they may be fully recovered out of their lapsed condition.
III. Such as have obtained remission of sins are bound to express their gratitude and thankfulness to God by new obedience.
1. That they may not undo what is done, and so build again the things they have destroyed (Gal_2:17-18).
2. That we may make good our qualification. Certain it is that none are pardoned but those that are renewed and born again; for the application of the merit of Christ and the gift of the Spirit are inseparable (1Co_6:11). S. To express their gratitude and thankfulness (2Co_5:14).
4. Because they have great encouragements (Psa_130:4). Use--
1. Let me now exhort you to seek after the pardon of sins. To this end--
(1) Consider your necessity.
(2) Consider the grounds and hopes of pardon; Gods merciful nature and self-inclination to pity us.
(3) Consider what a blessed comfort it is to have sin forgiven (Psa_32:1-2). Use--
2. To stir us up not to offend God any more, or provoke Him to anger by our sins. (T. Manton, D. D.)
A sermon to the Lords little children
I. I want the babes in grace, the weak in faith, to notice their privilege. I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His names sake.
1. This is a privilege extremely desired by the little children. They have but lately felt the burden of guilt; the Spirit of God has but newly convinced them of sin; and, therefore, above everything, their prayer is, Father, forgive me. To the freshly saved it is a joy worth worlds to have their sins forgiven; and this joy belongs of right to all the saints, yea, even to the little children in the family of God. The pardon of sin is as the pearl of great price to you in your present stage of spiritual life; you would have sold all that you had in order to procure it; and now that you have it your heart is aglow with gratitude. Far be it from me to stay your holy joy, and yet the Lord will show you greater things than these.
2. At your stage of experience pardon is the most prominent blessing of the covenant. The newly pardoned does not yet see the innumerable other blessings which come in the train of forgiveness; he is for the present absorbed in the hearing of that one sentence, Go in peace; thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee. Pardon is but an entrance blessing, a welcome at the doorstep: there are rarer joys within the house. You have become an heir to a boundless inheritance; all things are yours; heaven, and Christ, and God are yours.
3. Here let me observe that the forgiveness of sins is assuredly the possession of the new beginner in the Divine life.
4. Note, also, that your sins are forgiven you on the same terms as those of the apostle, and the greatest of the saints: your sins are forgiven you for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of His glorious person, for the sake of His honourable offices, for the sake of His atoning death, for the sake of His glorious resurrection, for the sake of His perpetual intercession before the throne of God.
5. Now notice that this is the reason why John wrote to you, little children. The moment, then, that a man has his sins forgiven, he is old enough to begin to understand that which is written, and he should become a Bible reader.
II. I have to speak of the knowledge of these little children. I have written unto you, little children, because ye have known, or know, the Father. The tiniest babe in the family of God knows the Father.
1. For, as we have seen, his sins are forgiven him. By whom is that pardon given? Why, by the Father; and, therefore, he that has had his sins forgiven him necessarily knows the Father.
2. Moreover, this is a piece of knowledge which the child of God obtains very early in his spiritual life; for whatever a child does not know, he knows his father. Little children, you know God now in your spiritual childhood. You could not write a treatise upon His attributes; but you know Him by the instinct of a child. Little children, the result of your knowing God as your Father is that when He is away from you you are in the habit of crying after Him. On the other hand, when you do get to your Father you show that you love Him by the perfect restfulness of your spirit. In God you are at home. The presence of God is the paradise of the believer. This also is true, that you seek to imitate Him. Would you not be perfect if you could? If you could, would you not be rid of every sin? And do you not glory in Him? Little children when they begin to talk, and go to school, how proud they are of their father! We cannot make enough of our God. We extol Him with all our might. With the blessed virgin we sing, My soul doth magnify the Lord.
III. The precepts which John has written for your guidance. First, look at 1Jn_2:1-29. My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not.
1. That is the first precept--little children, sin not. Children are very apt to get into the mire. There is so much of carnality about us, so much of the old Adam, that the question is not into which sin we fall, but into which sin we do not fall. Like the pendulum, we swing to the right hand and then to the left: we err first in one way and then in another; we are ever inclined to evil. Avoid every sin. Ask for the grace of God to sanctify you wholly, spirit, soul, and body.
2. Further on in this second chapter the apostle writes to them again, and tells them (1Jn_2:18) that it is the last time, and that there are many antichrists abroad. You will have to run your eye right down the chapter till you come to 1Jn_2:24, for that is what he says to little children, because there are many antichrists in the world that would seduce them; Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. Little children are very fickle. The toys which they cry for one day they break the next; young minds change with the wind. So, little children, there are many evil ones who will endeavour to seduce you from the truth of God, it is well to be on your guard against those who would mislead you. Till we are rooted and grounded in the truth, new things have great charms for us, especially if they have about them a great show of holiness and zeal for God. Little children, let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning, leave to others the soon-exhausted novelties.
3. Little children, here is a third precept for you (1Jn_2:28). And now, little children, abide in Him. Let the truth abide in you, and do you abide in Christ, who is the truth. What next?
4. Read on to 1Jn_3:7 --Little children, let no man deceive you. Children are very credulous; they will believe any idle tale if it be told them by a clever and attractive person. Little children, believe your Saviour, but be not ready to believe anybody else.
5. Further on (1Jn_3:18) we read, My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
6. You have the next word in 1Jn_4:4 --Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. Satan dwells in the world, and he is mighty; but God dwells in you, and He is almighty; therefore be not afraid.
7. The last precept to little children is at the end of the Epistle. Care fully read the last verse--Little children, keep yourselves from idols. I do not think you are likely to fall in love with the idols of the heathen and bow down to them; but there are plenty of other gods which are the idols of one period and the derision of the next. Keep you to Christ. Ask not for pomp and show; ask not for noise and bluster; ask for nothing but that your sins may be forgiven you, that you may know the Father, and then that you may abide in Christ, and be full of love to all the family of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The gospel to the young
What is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the young?
1. It appeals to their conscience, for youth has a conscience, a very sensitive conscience. How the boy blushes when he tells his first lie. The soul of the boy shrinks from sin at first. How penitent he is for the angry blow or the cruel word. May I not tell that child how sin may be put away? Ah, we tell the child, and we tell him today, that the lie will grow, and that the habit will increase.
2. It is also a gospel to the heart. I believe in making religion a personal thing, in bringing before the child, or the growing boy, the Lord Jesus Christ as a living, loving person, One who feels for him, and One who knows him.
3. It is a gospel which appeals to the admirations. It tells the child of the wondrous promises of God, and the little childs admiration is kindled.
4. It is the gospel to the energies. It represents life as a vineyard to be planted, as a battle to be fought, as a work to be done. The gospel to the young tells them that if they grow up there is work for them to do.
5. It is a gospel of aspirations. Youth is the time of hope. Youth is the time of ambitions. And the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ recognises that, and will never laugh at the young Joseph because he has dreamed that other sheaves are coming and bowing down to his sheaf. But remember, boy, the sheaves will never bow down to your sheaf unless you take off your coat, and sharpen your sickle, and get to work. Life is not simply to be dreamed away. (E. A. Stuart, M. A.)
The Father and His children
Having shown what God is, and what follows from that, what Christ is, and also what follows from that, St. John now tells his readers what by the grace of God they themselves are, and what follows from that. St. Johns description of Christians.
I. In their unity, or as to the things they have in common.
1. A common life (verse 12). Children is one of the standing terms in this Epistle for all Christians of all ages and ranks; and the great truth to which this term witnesses is the kinship of all Christian people.
2. We are all feeble in power, partial in knowledge, fractious in temper, imperfect in all things. If Newton at the height of his career felt himself a child strolling on the shore of a fathomless sea; if St. Paul at the height of his inspiration felt that his views of truth were imperfect, for now I know in part, and prophesy in part; if Michael Angelo at eighty said, I carry my satchel still--still like a little child going every day to school to learn a new lesson; if J.R. Green, with all his mine of knowledge, said, I shall die learning; surely, then, we must feel that the term little ones is no piece of apostolic play fulness, no mere pet name prompted by St. Johns great love, but a strictly accurate description of us all.
3. Faith in His name, i.e., in Himself, as revealed by Him self to us--is the first religious act of man. Forgiveness in His name is the first religious gift of God. Faith and forgiveness constitute the first act of reciprocity, of give and take between God and man. Now forgiveness of sin is the third fact common to all Christians. All Christians are akin. All are imperfect. All are for given.
4. To know the Father means to live in direct personal communion with the Father--personally to love Him, to obey Him, to draw near Him in prayer and praise. To live with regard to God not like an orphan whose father is a mere memory or a hearsay, but like a child whose father is alive and at home, who sees him every day, knows him better and loves more as each day passes--that is the crowning feature of the Christian life.
II. In their variety.
1. Knowledge is the feature of age. I write unto you, fathers, because ye know. You cannot begin your Christian life with knowing; you must begin with believing. Life--only a life of action for God can change belief into knowledge.
2. Young men, there is a fight before you. Mrs. Oliphant, in one of her weird stories, tells of a secret chamber in a haunted castle, where dwelt for ages a bad ancestor of a lordly race, keeping himself alive by unholy arts. Every heir of that house on his twenty-first birth day was compelled to enter the chamber alone and meet the temptations of this evil man. One by one they fell into the snare; till one came who discarded the sword given him, and met the tempter in Gods name, and conquered. Well, that weird ghost story is our own life story. All men and all women meet that spectre. We would protect you young folk; we would save you the temptation in the wilder ness; but it may not be. Hell will assault you at every point of your nature. Now a young mans strength in that dread hour depends on how much of Gods Word he has in him. (J. M. Gibbon.)
Christians as little children
St. John here considers the children of God, whom, as previously, he calls little, not contemptuously, but in reference to known infirmities, abbreviated knowledge, and feeble progress. The greatest saint, after all, is but as a little child, as it respects attainments in virtue and knowledge. As a giant, beside a pyramid of Egypt, is but as a pigmy; and the whole earth, compared with the universe in which it rolls, but a small planet; and its loftiest peaks as mites on its surface when compared with its bulk; so Gods worshippers, compared with Him, the Omniscient, the Omnipresent, and the Eternal, are as nothing. The wisest are the most humble, because they know how little they know, and how much of truth there remains to be known; which, as an ocean, lies before them in fathomless depths. Like those who climb mountains of ashes, who slide back as they make the progressive step, so we, through defective education, and from our own negligence, have to unlearn, as well as to learn; and, after all, are but learners still, and but as children, who are apt to stay, liable to fall, and who require continually to look up to the All-wise and All-good. To little children, even the babes in Christ, St. John proclaims the most consoling truth, viz., that their sins are forgiven. Our blessed Lord authorises us to be happy, when it is thus with us, saying, Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee. To have our sins forgiven is to have life indeed; all are most miserable till then, however unjustly gay or blindly secure. (John Stock, M. A.)
Young Christians to be cared for
The true pastor careth for every member of Christs body committed to His trust. He does not regard the cedars and the oaks only; but also the tender plants and shrubs in the garden of the Lord. (John Stock, M. A.)
Because your sins are forgiven you for His names sake--
Gods glory in the forgiveness of sin for His names sake
For His names sake! These petitions which occur frequently in the Book of Psalms have been granted to the very letter. For Thy names sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy name. Deliver us, purge away our sins, for Thy names sake. You must be aware that the expression the name of the Lord is used frequently in Scripture to denote, generally, His nature and attributes. Indeed, the name of the Lord is put virtually for God Himself; so that what is said to be done for the sake of His name might be regarded as done for His own sake by God. And you will find that when employed as a motive or reason, there is a prevalence in Gods name which is assigned to no other plea.
I. You cannot mark more distinctly the alteration wrought by Christ on human condition than by representing Him as placing us in such a position that we can ask God for His own sake to pardon iniquity. It is true that prayer, from its very nature, must correspond to the dictates of the Divine attributes, or the demands of the Divine glory; in other words, what our necessities impel us to ask, must be just what God, in compliance with His own properties, can be ready to bestow; else there is no hope of the acceptance of our petitions; but that this should be possible in respect of the forgiveness of sin is a marvel which overwhelms us, even when familiar with the scheme of redemption. The glorious, the stupendous thing in this scheme is, that it consulted equally for God and man; that it made the Divine honour as much interested as human necessity in the granting of pardon to all who would accept. Justice itself, holiness itself--these not only permit our pardon, they demand our glorification. In short, we can not only ask God to forgive in the hope that His compassion may incline Him to show favour, we can take the bold and unassailable ground of asking Him to forgive for His names sake. When the Psalmist asked for forgiveness, he asked it for the sake of Gods name. Indeed, the Psalmist was not privileged to see the things which we see, or to hear the things which we hear. He may not have been allowed to discern the exact process; but, in common with other patriarchs and saints under the old dispensation, he had reached a firm assurance that God stood pledged to provide a ransom; that, therefore, the Divine honour was indissolubly bound up with the pardon of sin. And this sufficed. But if David, living only in the twilight of revelation, taught only through the mysteriousness of prophecy and type--if he believed that pardon might be asked for the sake of Gods name, shall not we acknowledge the fact--we, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth Crucified amongst us--we, who know that God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him--we, who are taught that all the promises of God are yea in Christ, and in Him amen?
II. Consider more particularly the comfort derivable from this great truth, that it is for His names sake that God forgives sin. And we may here say, that since God forgives sin for His own sake, there is no room whatever for fear that our sins are too great to be pardoned. We may even go so far as to declare, that if it be always for the sake of His own name that God acts when pardoning iniquity, then the greater the iniquity the greater the reason why He should forgive. David would seem to have felt this when he prayed--For Thy names sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Human sinfulness has been turned into the widest field for the display of Divinity, so that on the arena of this ruined creation there may be such a manifestation of all that is majestic in Godhead as should serve to make it a theatre of instruction to the highest order of being. And we cannot hesitate to maintain that it is the greatness of moral evil which has made His interference so honourable to the Almighty. It was a case, if we dare use the expression, worthy the succours of the Godhead. When a Manasseh, who had sinned beyond all that went before, is forgiven, and Paul, who had thirsted for the blood of the saints, is reconciled unto God, we feel that every attribute which pardon glorifies must be glorified in the highest possible degree. If He was glorified in stilling the tempest, He must be most glorious when that tempest is fiercest. And though when the transgressor remembers that his sins have been numerous and heinous, or that his iniquity has been specially flagrant, if he had to ask forgiveness for his own sake, he might well be discouraged, yet when he calls to mind that if God forgives at all, He must forgive for His names sake, it should not be the greatness of his sin which can withhold him from prayer. The bitter impiety of the reckless is not more offensive to our Maker than the suspicion that He is unwilling to receive back the prodigal. Such suspicion throws doubt upon the truth of His Word; and what can be imagined more derogatory to the honour of God? You are expressly told that God willeth not the death of a sinner, but rather that all would repent and live. Is this true? God saith it. Will you deny it? Will you falsify it? Yet you do if you fear to come to Him, because you know, because you feel that your transgressions are great, that your offences are multiplied. Whom did Christ die for? The guilty. Whom does He intercede for? The guilty. The name of the Lord, saith Solomon, is a strong tower. If so, why should we not flee to it and be safe, forasmuch as to little children an apostle could say, Your sins are forgiven you for His names sake? (H. Melvill, B. D.)
For His names sake
Living in the joy and light of the Divine Fatherhood, the Apostle John had come to regard all disciples of Jesus as children; and as the beauty of a child is in its childhood, its littleness, its unassertiveness, its dependableness, the apostle seems to have a delight in speaking of the disciples of Jesus as little children, remembering doubtless the little child that Jesus took and set in the midst of those disciples who were wrangling about greatness and place and position. I think there is much of instruction, and no little of comfort for us if only we will try and see things as the Apostle John sees them. He acknowledges the dark fact of sin, the bright fact of forgiveness, and the brightest of all facts--that forgiveness is based on the relation which Jesus Christ has established between Himself and us. One is weary of hearing of secular education as a cure for the sinfulness of mans nature. I am sure that an eloquent writer of our day is right on this--that if the influence of the outpoured life of Christ were withdrawn from our world, sins would not only increase incalculably in number, but the tyranny of sin would be fearfully augmented, and it would spread among a greater number of people. It is a new disposition, a new heart which man needs, and the outpoured life of God in Christ is necessary to produce that; as necessary to produce it as the outpoured radiance of the sun is necessary to produce the fruits of the earth by which our physical nature is sustained. Therefore it is that the Apostle John goes far deeper than to connect the forgiveness of sin with repentance for sin; he connects it with the relationship we sustain to Christ and the relationship He sustains to us. Some one asks--why is it necessary that Jesus the Christ of God should put Himself into the relations towards us which have been established, in order that the Everlasting Father may forgive sins? Why cannot He say to the sorrowing man, I forgive you, and have done with it?
1. There are reasons in His own nature. When God undertakes to forgive sin He pledges Himself to rescue the forgiven man from his sin. In a word, He undertakes to regenerate his nature, to renew it so that he shall eventually live the unsinning life. And in order to that, Jesus Christ and His work are necessary.
2. There are reasons in the nature of man. To forgive a sinner and leave him to the helplessness which has come from his sin is only half forgiveness. Man needs to be brought into such an understanding of God and into such a love of God that he will hate to sin against Him. In order to that, Christ Jesus and His sacrifice of Himself are necessary.
3. There are reasons, too, in the Divine government. It must be made universally evident that there is no righteous reason for rebellion against God on the part of any. (R. Thomas.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v15 Chapter 10
Chapter 10
THE WORLD WHICH WE MUST NOT LOVE
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1Jn_2:15-16
An adequate development of words so compressed and pregnant as these would require a separate treatise, or series of treatises. But if we succeed in grasping St. Johns conception of the world, we shall have a key that will open to us this cabinet of spiritual thought.
In the writings of St. John the world is always found in one or other of four senses, as may be decided by the context.
(1) It means the creation, the universe. So our Lord in His High priestly prayer -"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."
(2) It is used for the earth locally as the place where man resides; and whose soil the Son of God trod for a while. "I am no more in the world, but these are in the world."
(3) It denotes the chief inhabitants of the earth, they to whom the counsels of God mainly point-men universally. Such a transference is common in nearly all languages. Both the inhabitants of a building, and the material structure which contains them, are called "a house"; and the inhabitants are frequently bitterly blamed, while the beauty of the structure is passionately admired. In this sense there is a magnificent width in the word "world." We cannot but feel indignant at attempts to gird its grandeur within the narrow rim of a human system. "The bread that I will give," said He who knew best, "is My flesh which I will give for the life of the world." "He is the propitiation for the whole world," writes the Apostle at the beginning of this chapter. In this sense, if we would imitate Christ, if we would aspire to the Fathers perfection, "love not the world" must be tempered by that other tender oracle-"God so loved the world."
In none of these senses can the world here be understood. There remains then:
(4) a fourth signification, which has two allied shades of thought. World is employed to cover the whole present existence, with its blended good and evil-susceptible of elevation by grace, susceptible also of deeper depths of sin and ruin. But yet again the indifferent meaning passes into one that is wholly evil, wholly within a region of darkness. The first creation was pronounced by God in each department "good" collectively; when crowned by Gods masterpiece in man, "very good." "All things," our Apostle tells us, "were made through Him (the Word), and without Him was not anything made that was made." But as that was a world wholly good, so is this a world wholly evil. This evil world is not Gods creation, drew not its origin from Him. All that is in it came out from it, from nothing higher. This wholly evil world is not the material creation; if it were, we should be landed in dualism, or Manicheism. It is not an entity, an actual tangible thing, a creation. It is not of Gods world that St. John cries in that last fierce word of abhorrence which he flings at it as he sees the shadowy thing like an evil spirit made visible in an idols arms-"the world lieth wholly in the evil one."
This anti-world, this caricature of creation, this thing of negations, is spun out of three abuses of the endowment of Gods glorious gift of free will to man; out of three noble instincts ignobly used. First, "the lust of the flesh"-of which flesh is the seat, and supplies the organic medium through which it works. The flesh is that softer part of the frame which by the network of the nerves is intensely susceptible of pleasurable and painful sensations: capable of heroic patient submission to the higher principles of conscience and spirit, capable also of frightful rebellion. Of all theologians St. John is the least likely to fall into the exaggeration of libelling the flesh as essentially evil. Is it not he who, whether in his Gospel, or in his Epistles, delights to speak of the flesh of Jesus, to record words in which He refers to it? Still the flesh brings us into contact with all sins which are sins that spring from, and end in, the senses. Shall we ask for a catalogue of particulars from St. John? Nay, we cannot expect that the virgin Apostle, who received the Virgin Mother from the Virgin Lord upon the cross, will sully his virgin pen with words so abhorred. When he has uttered the lust of the flesh his shudder is followed by an eloquent silence. We can fill up the blank too well-drunkenness, gluttony, thoughts and motions which spring from deliberate, wilfully cherished, rebellious sensuality; which fill many of us with pain and fear, and wring cries and bitter tears from penitents, and even from saints. The second, abuse of free will, the second element in this world which is not Gods world, is the desire of which the eyes are the seat-"the lust of the eyes." To the two sins which we instinctively associate with this phrase- voluptuousness and curiosity of the senses or the soul-Scripture might seem to add envy, which derives so much of its aliment from sight. In this lies the Christians warning against wilfully indulging in evil sights, bad plays, bad books, bad pictures.
He who is outwardly the spectator of these things becomes inwardly the actor of them. The eye is, so to speak, the burning glass of the soul; it draws the rays from their evil brightness to a focus, and may kindle a raging fire in the heart. Under this department comes unregulated spiritual or intellectual curiosity. The first need not trouble us so much as it did Christians in a more believing time. Comparatively very few are in danger from the planchette or from astrology. But surely it is a rash thing for an ordinary mind, without a clear call of duty, without any adequate preparation, to place its faith within the deadly grip of some powerful adversary. People really seem to have absolutely no conscience about reading anything-the last philosophical Life of Christ, or the last romance; of which the titles might be with advantage exchanged, for the philosophical history is a light romance, and the romance is a heavy philosophy. The third constituent in the evil anti-trinity of the anti-world is "the pride" (the arrogancy, gasconade, almost swagger) "of life," of which the lower life is the seat. The thought is not so much of outward pomp and ostentation as of that false pride which arises in the heart. The arrogancy is within; the gasconade plays its "fantastic tricks before high heaven." And each of these three elements (making up as. they do collectively all that is "in the world" and springing out of the world) is not a substantive thing, not an original ingredient of mans nature, or among the forms of Gods world; it is the perversion of an element which had a use that was noble, or at least innocent. For first comes "the lust of the flesh." Take those two objects to which this lust turns with a fierce and perverted passion. The possession of flesh in itself leads man to crave for the necessary support to his native weakness. The mutual craving for the love of beings so like and so unlike as man and woman, if it be a weakness, has at least a most touching and exquisite side. Again, is not a yearning for beauty gratified through the eyes? Were they not given for the enjoyment, for the teaching, at once high and sweet, of Nature and of Art? Art may be a moral and spiritual discipline. The ideas of Beauty from gifted minds by cunning hands transferred to, and stamped upon, outward things, come from the ancient and uncreated Beauty, whose beauty is as perfect as His truth and strength. Still further; in the lower life, and in its lawful use, there was intended to be a something of quiet satisfaction, a certain restfulness, at times making us happy and triumphant. And lo! for all this, not moderate fare and pure love, not thoughtful curiosity and the sweet pensiveness which is the best tribute to the beautiful-not a wise humility which makes us feel that our times are in Gods hands and our means His continual gift-but degraded senses, low art, evil literature, a pride which is as grovelling as it is godless.
These three typical summaries of the evil tendencies in the exercise of free will correspond with a remarkable fulness to the two narratives of trial which give us the compendium and general outline of all human temptation.
Our Lords three temptations answer to this division. The lust of the flesh is in essence the rebellion of the lower appetites, inherent to creaturely dependence, against the higher principle or law. The nearest and only conceivable approach to this in the sinless Man would be in His seeking lawful support by unlawful means- procuring food by a miraculous exertion of power, which only would have become sinful, or short of the highest goodness, by some condition of its exercise at that time and in that place. An appeal to the desire for beauty and glory, with an implied hint of using them for Gods greater honour, is the essence of. the second temptation; the one possible approximation to the "lust of the eyes" in that perfect character. The interior deception of some touch of pride in the visible support of angels wafting the Son of God through the air is Satans one sinister way of insinuating to the Saviour something akin to "the pride of life."
In the case of the other earlier typical trials it will be observed that while the temptations fit into the same threefold framework, they are placed in an order which exactly reverses that of St. John. For in Eden the first approach is through "pride"; the magnificent promise of elevation in the scale of being, of the knowledge that would win the wonder of the spiritual world. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." {Gen_3:5} The next step is that which directs the curiosity both of the senses and of the aspiring mind to the object, forbidden-"when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise." {Gen_3:6} Then seems to have come some strange and sad rebellion of the lower nature, filling their souls with shame; some bitter revelation of the law of sin in their members; some knowledge that they were contaminated by the "lust of the flesh." {Gen_3:7} The order of the temptation in the narrative of Moses is historical; St. Johns order is moral and spiritual, answering to the facts of life. The "lust of the flesh," which may approach the child through childish greed, grows apace. At first it is half unconscious; then it becomes coarse and palpable. In the mans desire acting with unregulated curiosity, through ambition of knowledge at any price, searching out for itself books and other instruments with deliberate desire to kindle lust, the "lust of the eyes" ceases not its fatal influence. The crowning sin of pride with its selfishness, which is self apart from God as well as from the brother, finds its place in the "pride of life."
III We may now be in a position to see more clearly against what world the Primate of early Christendom pronounced his anathema, and launched his interdict, and why?
What "world" did he denounce?
Clearly not the world as the creation, the universe. Not again the earth locally. God made and ordered all things. Why should we not love them with a holy and a blameless love? Only we should not love them in themselves; we should not cling to them forgetting Him. Suppose that some husband heaped beautiful and costly presents upon his wife whom he loved. At last with the intuition of love he begins to see what is the secret of such cold imitation of love as that icy heart can give. She loves him not - his riches, not the man; his gifts, not the giver. And thus loving with that frigid love which has no heart in it, there is no true love; her heart is anothers. Gifts are given that the giver may be loved in them. If it is true that "gifts are naught when givers prove unkind," it is also true that there is a sort of adultery of the heart when the taker is unkind-because the gift is valuable, not because the bestower is dear. And so the world, Gods beautiful world, now becomes to us an idol. If we are so lost in the possession of Nature, in the march of law, in the majestic growth, in the stars above and in the plants below, that we forget the Lawgiver, who from such humble beginnings has brought out a world of beauty and order; if with modern poets we find content, calm, happiness, purity, rest, simply in contemplating the glaciers, the waves, and the stars; then we look at the world even in this sense in a way which is a violation of St. Johns rule. Yet again, the world which is now condemned is not humanity. There is no real Christianity in taking black views, and speaking bitter things, about the human society to which we belong, and the human nature of which we are partakers. No doubt Christianity believes that man "is very far gone from original righteousness"; that there is a "corruption in the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam." Yet the utterers of unwholesome apothegms, the suspecters of their kind, are not Christian thinkers. The philosophic historian, whose gorge rose at the doctrine of the Fall, thought much worse of man practically than the Fathers of the Church. They bowed before martyrdom and purity, and believed in them with a child-like faith. For Gibbon, the martyr was not quite so true, nor the virgin quite so pure, nor the saint quite so holy. He who knew human nature best, who has thrown that terrible ray of light into the unlit gulf of the heart when He tells us "what proceeds out of the heart of man," {Mar_7:21} had yet the ear which was the first to hear the trembling of the one chord that yet kept healthful time and tune in the harlots passionate heart. He believed that man was recoverable; lost, but capable of being found. After all, in this sense there is something worthy of love in man. "God so loved" (not so hated) "the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." Shall we say that we are to hate the world which He loved?
And now we come to that world which God never loved, never will love, never will reconcile to Himself, -which we are not to love.
This is most important to see; for there is always a danger in setting out with a stricter standard than Christs, a narrower road than the narrow one which leads to heaven. Experience proves that they who begin with standards of duty which are impossibly high end with standards of duty which are sometimes sadly low. Such men have tried the impracticable, and failed; the practicable seems to be too hard for them ever afterwards. They who begin by anathematising the world in things innocent, indifferent, or even laudable, not rarely end by a reaction of thought which believes that the world is nothing and nowhere.
But there is such a thing as the world in St, Johns sense-an evil world brought into existence by the abuse of our free will; filled by the anti-trinity, by "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."
Let us not confuse "the world" with the earth, with the whole race of man, with general society, with any particular set, however much some sets are to be avoided. Look at the thing fairly. Two people, we will say, go to London, to live there. One, from circumstances of life and position, naturally falls into the highest social circle. Another has introductions to a smaller set, with an apparently more serious connection. Follow the first some evening. He drives to a great gathering. The room which he enters is ablaze with light; jewelled orders sparkle upon mens coats, and fair women move in exquisite dresses. We look at the scene and we say-"what worldly society has the man fallen into!" Perhaps so, in a sense. But about the same time the other walks to a little room with humbler adjuncts, where a grave and apparently serious circle meet together. We are able to look in there also, and we exclaim-"this is serious society, unworldly society." Perhaps so, again. Yet let us read the letters of Mary Godolphin. She bore a life unspotted by the world in the dissolute court of Charles II, because the love of the Father was in her. In small serious circles are there no hidden lusts which blaze up in scandals? Is there no vanity, no pride, no hatred? In the world of Charles IIs court Mary Godolphin lived out of the world which God hated; in the religious world not a few, certainly, live in the world which is not Gods. For, once more, the world is not so much a place- though at times its power seems to have been drawn into one intense focus, as in the empire of which Rome was the centre, and which may have been in the Apostles thought in the following verse. In the truest and deepest sense the world consists of our own spiritual surrounding; it is the place which we make for our own souls. No walls that ever were reared can shut out the world from us; the "Nun of Kenmare" found that it followed her into the seemingly spiritual retreat of a severe Order. The world in its essence is subtler and thinner than the most infinitesimal of the bacterian germs in the air. They can be strained off by the exquisite apparatus of a man of science. At a certain height they cease to exist. But the world may be wherever we are; we carry it with us wherever we go, it lasts while our lives last. No consecration can utterly banish it even from within the churchs walls; it dares to be round us while we kneel, and follows us into the presence of God.
Why does God hate this "world"-the world in this sense? St. John tells us. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Deep in every heart must be one or other of two loves. There is no room for two master passions. There is an expulsive power in all true affection. What tenderness and pathos, how much of expostulation, more potent because reserved-"the love of the Father is not in him"! He has told all his "little ones" that he has written to them because they "know the Father." St. John does not use sacred names at random. Even Voltaire felt that there was something almost awful in hearing Newton pronounce the name of God. Such in an incomparably higher degree is the spirit of St. John. In this section he writes of "the love of the Father," {1Jn_2:15-16} and of the "will of God." (1Jn_2:17.) The first title has more sweetness than majesty; the second more majesty than sweetness. He would throw into his plea some of the winningness of one who uses this as a resistless argument with a tempted, but loving child-an argument often successful when every other fails. "If you do this, your Father will not love you; you will not be His child." We have but to read this with the hearts of Gods dear children. Then we shall find that if the "love not" of this verse contains "words of extirpation" it ends with others which are intended to draw us with cords of a man, and with bands of love.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv12–15 12–14. I write unto you, little children. John calls…
12–14. I write unto you, little children. John calls all the saints “little children.” Then he divides them into three classes, “fathers,” “young men,” and “little children” (verse 13), but the Greek word rendered “little children” in verse 13, is a different one from that of verses 1 and 12.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v12 1Jn_2:12-17 indicate the things which the disciples must not…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Jn_2:12-17 indicate the things which the disciples must not love, if they would walk in the light, and be sons with the “Only Begotten.”
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1Jn_2:12. Sins are forgiven.—The reception of Divine forgiveness is our virtual pledge that we will not again sin. “The forgiveness of sins is the first condition of Christian morals.” His name’s sake.—His name is Son. The basis of forgiveness is the offering to God the Father of a perfect sonship—the sonship of a man tested in a human life and death. St. John has not in mind what we mean by “for the sake of His atonement.”
1Jn_2:13. Fathers.—The older men among the disciples; regarded as having a prolonged personal experience. Young men.—Who have gained something like a personal hold of Divine things, but are in danger of being over-confident and over-positive. They have gained first victories over evil, and are in danger of being unduly proud of their success. In each case St. John recognises a certain maturity, in which there is hope, together with a certain immaturity, which exposes disciples to the powers of evil and temptation.
1Jn_2:15. The world.—Compare our Lord’s words, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” By the “world” we may understand “that moral order which is antagonistic to God.” Or we may keep in the line of St. John’s thought and say, “It is all that sphere in which only self-interests are allowed to rule.” St. John personifies the self, and calls it the “evil one,” the “wicked one.” Things in the world.—The love of pleasure, money, glory. See Jas_1:27; Jas_4:4. Philo taught, “It is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God.”
1Jn_2:16. Lust of the flesh.—The genitive after ἐπιθυμία is usually subjective. The lusts which have their agents in the flesh and in the eyes. Lust is desire that is not being held in wise and safe control. “The habit of a mind engrossed by sensual gratifications.” Pride of life.—This is well expressed by the term “braggadocio of life”; “wanton ostentation in gratifying the desires of sense and sight” (Jas_4:16). “All living up to a supposed social position, instead of as the responsible steward of undeserved bounties, is hereby condemned.”
1Jn_2:17. Abideth for ever.—Because God is on the side of goodness, and there are no forces which can effectively stop it, or destroy it. In the nature of things evil is temporary, and good is permanent. For ever means, “unto the age to come.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Jn_2:12-17
Types of Stages in Christian Experience.—We have piety here as it appears in individuals at different periods of life—its characters in each class, and the common danger of all. I. Little children. Their piety is characterised by much affection. II. Young men—and women too. Piety in manhood is—
1. Strong and courageous.
2. Full of enterprise and achievement. III. Old men, or fathers in Christ. The characteristic of these is knowledge—knowledge of men and things, but especially of Divine things (J. Leifchild, D.D.). It is, however, a fuller understanding of St. John to recognise in his three terms, “little children,” “young men,” “fathers,” figures of the three great stages of religious culture and experience which are represented in every Church. Sometimes the term “little children” is used to include all the believers, but at other times the threefold distinction is clear. In every Church there are always those who do but look on to Christian living, those who are in the actual strain of Christian living, and those who are able to look back on Christian living. Or to state the case in simple terms, there are united in the fellowship of every Church the immature, the prime, and the mature. And the blending of these classes, their mutual relations, responsibilities, and ministries, make the glory of Church life; and it is skilful and helpful mutual blending that we should try to secure. Let us see if we can recognise the distinctness of these types, and the ways in which each one may be the helper of the other.
I. “Little children” represent the “immature,” those who have no experience behind them, and do but look on to Christian living.—Of them St. John says, “I write unto you, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake”—“because ye know the Father.” The very first stage of Christian life is the thought of God which brings personal relations and the joy of forgiveness. The awakening of the soul is the sense of God that comes, the reality of God, the personal relation of God to the soul. No man is converted save as Jacob was, by a personal revelation of God to him. Express it in whatever form you may, the very essence of conversion is a man’s discovery that he is a child, and that God is his Father. A man cannot help becoming a new being, conscious of a new atmosphere and new relations, when once he has apprehended those two things. And there is no other possible beginning of the regenerate life. With that discovery there is bound to go another. He will feel his actual relations as a child with a father are not what they should be; and he cannot rest until they are made what they ought to be. And since he feels the wrong to be altogether on his side, he can but seek that Fatherly forgiveness which is so ready to be extended to every seeking child. There are always in the Church some persons who are at this first and simple stage of the Divine life. They are alive to the thought of God, and they have got their relations right with Him. But they have no experience. Christian living is an altogether unknown thing to them; they can but look on, and wonder what the long years will unfold. Such persons come into the fullest concern of Christian pastors, who, like St. John, will try to adapt their teaching and influence so as most efficiently to help and guide all such. The simplicity and strength of faith, the brightness and joy of first experience, in these “little children,” are a most gracious blessing to the spiritual life of our Churches, and it is well that every Church should have such representative cases always in it.
II. “Young men” represent the “prime,” those who are in the actual strain of Christian living.—“I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one”—“because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one.” These members of the Church are such as have some experience of the Christian life, enough to fit them for dealing with the duties, difficulties, and temptations that may come. When a man has reached some thirty years of life, he is in a sense prepared for life, partly matured. The unexpected will still happen; but the round of experiences which the man has gone through will have prepared him to deal wisely with any circumstances that may arise. And so there are in a Church those whose experiences of the Divine life have been sufficiently prolonged and varied to give them efficiency and maturity. They are like young men in their prime. On them the strain of Church life and responsibility rests. They are fitted for it: their experiences are fresh; none have become so prolonged as to become wearisome, the sense of strength and wisdom makes Church life and work a delight to them. They have fought evil, in one shape and another. They have felt the thrill of joy in first victories, and a great sense of power is upon them. But they need the wisely adapted teachings of the apostle, and of faithful ministers, because in their conscious strength lies a subtle peril. These experiences are not complete; they have no experience of keeping on. There is too much excitement in their experience; they are too much in it themselves. It is more an experience of what they have been doing, than of what God has been doing in them. It gives them confidence and energy. They feel as if they could overcome all the evil ones, and so need to be reminded that “old Satan may prove too much for young Melancthon.”
III. “Fathers” represent the “mature,” those who are able to look back on Christian living.—“I write unto you, fathers, because ye know Him which is from the beginning.” This is the one thing in St. John’s mind concerning the fathers, and he repeats it a second time. Their experience was complete. It might be that in the Churches which St. John addressed some yet lingered who had been connected with Church life from the very beginning, from the days of the earthly manifestation of the Lord Jesus. Or the thought may be of a long life spent in Christian relations, and bringing not only every kind of experience, but such a repetition of experiences as involves the special experience of weariness through sameness. There are always “fathers” in this sense in Christian Churches; and they need apostolic counsels, for they are in danger of checking enterprise, by being quite sure that everything attempted will fail, because they have seen so many things fail, and because they know so well how many difficulties everything will have to contend against. A full experience is not an unqualified advantage. In Christian experience it is possible to know so much as to lose faith in anything. These types can be helpful to each other in Church life. The “little children” call for sympathy, and put the brightness of simple faith into Church relations. The “young men” bear the burden of Church duties and responsibilities. And the “fathers” temper enterprise with counsels of prudence. And what is the one message which St. John considers to have its precise adaptation to each of these classes? At first sight it seems to be suitable only for the “young men,” those in their prime. It is this, “Love not the world.” But if we understand St. John to mean by the world what we may call personified (or projected) self, we shall at once see how his advice becomes applicable to all the classes. The peril of the “little children” is making too much of what they have felt; and that is simply putting self into their experiences. The peril of the “young men” is in making too much of what they do, of what they are doing in their maturity and strength; and that is simply putting self into their experiences. The peril of the “fathers” is in making too much of what they know, presuming upon their length of years and their observations; and that is simply putting self into their complete experiences. “Love not the world” really is but, in a figurative way, saying, “Love not yourself.” And this is plain to view when we notice that it is not the “world,” but the love of the world, against which we are so carefully warned. That is, it is something in us, not something outside us; it is the self in us that is always—either in some secret or some open way—trying to be master of us. St. John is evidently very anxious to make this quite plain to us. So he tells us what he means by the “things that are in the world,” and we see at once that they are, all three, not things of the outside world at all, but things of the world of self, the world within us. The “lust of the flesh” is a bad side of the self. The “lust of the eyes” is a bad side of the self. The “vain-glory of life” is a bad side of the self. Those things will be found to prove sources of difficulty to Church members in all the stages of the Divine life. Beginners must beware of over-mastering self. Strong men must beware of over-mastering self. Aged men—our fathers in Christ—must beware of the subtle ways in which self can spoil their witness and their influence. And St. John suggests the safeguard that will defend us at every stage of the Divine life—defend us from the precise influence of the world of self upon us. It is this—Keep up the full sense of your child-relation to the Father, and in everything watch for and do His will.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Jn_2:12. Forgiveness of Sins a First Experience.—It is remarkable that “forgiveness of sins” should be associated with the term “little children,” if children in age are meant by the apostle. The real sense of sin, and consequently the full joy of forgiveness, can only be known by those of mature age, who have intelligent understanding, and personal experience, of what wilful sin is and involves. A child’s experience of sin and forgiveness are right enough and important enough for the child-stage of life; but we must look to the larger, fuller life of manhood for real and deep experiences. When a man is awakened by the Spirit of God, he is brought to a sense of sin, and of the conditions into which sin has brought him. He is oppressed above everything by the conviction that it has put him out of pleasant relations with the Father-God, and brought on him the Divine disfavour and frown. Then it is clear that there can be no beginning of Christian life, without such a restoration of relations with God as must involve His forgiveness. Not a step can be taken in the Christian life until we know that we are forgiven and accepted.
1Jn_2:13. The Young Man’s “Wicked One.”—“Ye, young men, have overcome the wicked one.” It is very easy to assume that there is a Satan, and then say that Satan is meant by the “wicked one” here. But the verse needs some careful and precise thinking about. Personifying moral or immoral qualities, influences, or forces is constantly done, and constantly occasions difficulty. Joubert very wisely says, “The trick of personifying words is a fatal source of mischief in theology.” It is not intended here to present any arguments for or against the idea of a personal devil—only to direct attention to the suggestive fact, with which preachers may effectively deal, that the “young man’s wicked one” is nothing outside him, but is himself, in the untried and unrestrained strength of his intensity and passion. It is his undue “self-centredness,” “self-interest.” There can be no “wicked one” so wicked to him as his own weak, untested, over-confident self.
Knowing the Father.—“Ye know the Father.” We may learn from the case of the apostles—those first disciples—what is the Christian way of getting to see and know the Father.
I. The disciples were filled with the thought of Christ.—They had their Master in the sphere of the senses. They spent day by day with Him. They watched every deed, and listened for every word, and their whole thought was occupied with His personality. We can hardly imagine what it must have been to spend three years in the fascination of Christ’s daily presence. Those disciples could think of nothing but Jesus, and talk of nothing but Jesus. And this was so far good and right. Since Christ is God, we can never make too much of Him; we may fearlessly fill our heart and thought with Him. His individuality can never be too forcibly impressed upon us. And yet Christ will be grieved if we stop with His earthly manifestation, and fail to enter into His greater mystery. He does not want to be seen only with men’s bodily eyes. We may not—the disciples may not—stop with the fascination of the “Man Christ Jesus.” He does indeed strongly impress His human presence, but only with an ultimate design, only as a stepping-stone to something further and better. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh,” says St. Paul, “yet now henceforth know we Him [thus] no more.” Christ would neither have His disciples, nor us, rest in Him, if we can only see His earthly features. Disciples must see God in Him, even the Father-God in Him. We may not stay with the outward show of the Christ of the gospels: we too must find God in Him, even the Father-God in Him. The earthly and the human are but stepping-stones; and yet it is only with our feet on them that we can rise to higher and better things. The way to all else, and bettor, is to be, like the first disciples, full of the thought of Christ, and setting all our affection and hope on Him. But, on the other hand—
II. Christ was filled with the thought of His Father.—All His life was seen by Him in its relation to the Father, and to the Father’s will. He was absorbed with the thought of the Father. He was always talking of the Father. It was the word for God that was characteristic of Him, the sacred name that was continually upon His lips. He seemed to be always putting Himself back into the second place, that He might fill men’s thoughts with the holy, righteous Father. So thoroughly characteristic is this of His teaching, that we are almost justified in calling it “Jesus Christ’s name for God,” and in saying that it is the very point and essence of the revelation which He brought to men. He seemed only to live among men that, in His character, and by His conduct, He might “show us the Father.” Was He pure, with a strict and yet winsome purity? He was but bringing closely home to our thought and feeling the holiness of God. Was He gentle, and pitying, and merciful? He was but persuasively making all the “goodness of God to pass before us,” and proclaiming the Father-name of God before us. Was He personally touched by human sorrows? Did He really take up our human woes as burdens on His own sympathy? He was but convincing us that “like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” Look at His mighty works, His miracles of love and power. Are they mere! wonderful events—merely demonstrations of almightiness? Nay, surely, better far is their purpose. They are signs of the Father. There are the Father’s great works seen in miniature, that men may recognise the Father-hand that is in all the great things. Christ healed the sick, with a word and a touch, to reveal the living Father, who is watching by all sickbeds, raising up them that are bowed down, restoring, and healing, and comforting, every day and everywhere. Christ stood up to quell the sudden storm on little Galilee, to show His disciples the Father, who holdeth “the winds in His fists, and the waters in the hollow of His hand”; who can say, even to the winter-driven waves of the great ocean, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further”; who is the all-controlling Father even of the whirlwind and the tempest. Christ took the few loaves, and multiplied them into a full feast for the seated thousands, to show the Father-God, who, each returning year, multiplies the scattered seeds of the spring-time into the rich and waving autumn harvests from which all His children are fed. The miracles are not simply acts that glorify Christ’s power; the Father who sent Him, He doeth the works, and He stands out to view in all those miracles. They were all wrought with this for their supreme aim—to “shew us the Father.” All that Christ did, all that Christ said, all that Christ suffered, has for its one object the glorifying of the Father; and His closing prayer revealed the great purpose of His life: “Now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self.”
III. When disciples see Christ truly, they go past Him, and know the Father, see the Father, even as He did.—Seeing Christ truly! What is the true seeing of anything, or of any one? Is it ever so minute and exact a tracing of his doings or his sayings? Nay, it must be reading the heart—sympathetically entering into the very motive and spirit. Seeing is not a mere matter of bodily vision. What can any man who has only eyes in his body see of Christ? True seeing is soul-seeing,—apprehending the inner life of thought, principle, motive; seeing a man’s secret. What then may we see in Christ? He tells us Himself: “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” We may see the wise God as we trace the long and chequered history of our race, and note how “all things have been working together for good.” We can see the strong God as we look upon the everlasting mountains, and hear the mighty storm-voice echoing among the hills. We can know the beautiful and good God as we gaze upon the jewelled lake in its mountain setting, see the threading of the silver streamlet, or watch the golden-flowered fields. Goodness is revealed to all who can read nature’s heart. But how everything seems to pale, and fade, and pass out of vision, when we find that we can see and know our Father-God, in the human manifestation of Christ the Son, when we can read its heart aright! Simple souls, Christ’s “little children,” can “know the Father.”
1Jn_2:14-16. An Old Man’s Message to the Young.—The writer of these words was an old man, a very old man, a very noble old man,—one more than usually rich in the experiences of life; one whose work for many years had been to watch the influences for good or for evil affecting the people, so that he might duly warn and guide. We read of “Paul the aged,” but the man of whom we now speak was “John the Beloved,” who lived to be nearly a hundred years old. What a wonderful century of life his must have been! Born into Jewish privileges, but at a time when Jewish ceremonial had lost its ever-present Jehovah, and had become a vain formalism—born at a time when Jewish liberty was crushed under the heel of Roman supremacy—St. John must have had a hard youth-time and early manhood. For a soul with any bigness in it, any great wants in it, any yearnings after high and Divine things in it, those few years before the birth of Christ must have been a weary time—the cry of the soul ever stifled, the out-reaching hand smitten back, the empty soul left empty still. Manhood had fully dawned when St. John came into the illuminations of the “Light” God had sent into the world. Prepared by the repentance which John the Baptist demanded, he came to Jesus, “found in Him a resting-place,” and for some three years knew a kind of joy unspeakable in the daily fellowship of “God manifest in the flesh.” When he lost his Lord out of hand-grasp, there came years of loving service to the risen and living One—years of travel, of preaching, of teaching, of suffering, of practical dealing with varieties of character, and of opposing both subtle and open evils. Who can tell what care and what work were crowded into those long years! He must have come to know young men well. He watched the eagerness with which they received the gospel-message. He mourned over the devices by which they were so often enticed back into the world again. Surely the young may wisely sit at the feet of this reverend, this saintly, this experienced old man. Consider then—
I. The old man’s kindly description of young men.—“Ye are strong.” If this description were not given by an inspired teacher, we might suspect flattery, or at least such an effort to say kindly things as would open the young man’s heart to receive his counsels. But, in truth, St. John gives us a careful, an almost philosophical estimate of the young man. No single word could more exactly describe him. He is “strong.” “The glory of young men is their strength.” The prophet exclaims, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” The word is a fitting one to describe the bodily, physical vigour of the young. At no other time in life is the frame so perfect, the energy so abundant, the vitality so strong. Oftentimes there is such a flow of purely physical power, as cannot be exhausted in the toil of life, and must flow over into athletic sports. To the strong man labour is joy, not toil; it is only with the wearying years that a man finds his work grow toilsome and hard. But St. John means more than bodily strength; he applies his word to the whole man, to the moral and spiritual nature, as well as the physical. We never love as we love in youth. We never desire as as we desire in youth. We never battle with obstacles and difficulties as we battle with them in youth. Perhaps it is even true to say, that we never “hunger and thirst after righteousness” as we do in youth. There is an intensity in all that the young folks do. Sometimes, indeed, it needs checking; sometimes it is not ruled by prudence. Sometimes the young man’s glory becomes his shame. The very energy put into worldly pursuits may result in bringing into the soul the “love of the world,” and pushing out the “love of the Father.” And St. John says of the young men, “the word of God abideth in you.” Only just started in life, the cares, and toils, and sorrows that make up our human lot have not yet proved strong enough to efface the impressions of the word of God, as they have been made on your hearts by early teachings and associations. By and by this may be true of you: the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches may choke the word. By-and-by you may refuse the invitations of Divine grace, using the poor excuses, “I have bought a piece of land”; “I have bought live yoke of oxen.” But it is not so with you now. The hallowing impressions of the early years abide. Holy memories of mother’s prayers abide. Relics of influence from days of sickness abide. Thoughts come back that were started in the Sabbath class. Warm feelings fill the heart sometimes, renewing the sacred impressions of the Sabbath and the sanctuary. There is on your heart to-day a strong grip of Christian truth and Christian claim. As yet, you have your souls, your memories, filled up with the word of God, the desire for God. In that the beloved apostle finds a basis for his warning: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” And, again, St. John describes young men as those who have “overcome the wicked one.” How graciously God must have put the hedge of His protection round you, if this can be said truly of you! Up to this hour you have been kept from “that wicked one”—from young men’s sins, the sins that come in the line of bodily indulgence and passion. Up to this hour you stand in God’s all-searching presence, pure from these defiling and debasing forms of evil. A stained and erring man, in the shame and weariness of old age, once said to a young brother, “John, bless God every day you live, if, by His grace, you have been kept from youthful sins.” Up to this time you have overcome “that wicked one.” You have, then, begun the great conflict: you have begun to understand what life means and involves. Consider—
II. The old man’s estimate of young men’s dangers.—“The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” The old man knows what things there really are in the world, and what are their different values and influences. The young man can know very little of the world, and what he does know is largely disguised to deceive. There is an important difference between the old man’s “I know,” and the young man’s “I know.” When the old man says “I know,” he means, “I have been there,” “I have had to do with it,” “I have battled through it.” When the young man says “I know,” he only means, “I think so,” “I have heard so,” “I hope so.” Young folk often think that the dangers of life are magnified by the old people: they cannot see such pitfalls, such carefully concealed nets and gins, such gaily decked temptations, as they hear of. And yet the truth is with the old man, not with the young. It is a glorious thing to live, but it is a very responsible thing. It is a blessed thing to be in this wonderful world of God’s, with all these surroundings of pleasure, and all these possible achievements opening before us. But it is a highly perilous thing; and every earnest soul will want to ask, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way,” and be ready to pray, “Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins.” Aged St. John could see that the world appeals to three faculties, or capacities, in us; and that, if our controlling power be the love of the world, rather than the love of the Father, then the world will be sure to lead us away from all that is true and good, and put us into the power of the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” Everybody’s danger and temptation bear relation to these three things. The first, “the lust of the flesh,” embraces all the indulgences of the natural passions and depraved inclinations of our bodily nature—all the excesses in eating, and drinking, and sensuality to which fallen humanity is liable. And how appalling is the ruin wrought by these lusts of the flesh! Every day we may see, on the street, the leering side-glance of the sensualist, the bloated face and figure of the drunkard; and as we see them, we can scarcely admit the possibility of our ever becoming as they are. Yet St. John, with his full experience of life and temptation, sees danger even for us. “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong.” True of the powers of good in us, that is also true of the powers of evil. The “lusts of the flesh” in the young are strong. The passions and desires of our fallen nature are strong—stronger in youth-time than they ever again will be; and in their strength lies our peril. Remember, I beseech you, that the “lusts of the flesh” are not of the Father; they do not belong to the holy Father, they do not suit the great Father’s thoughts and hopes for you. If you would be the Son of the holy Father, then “flee youthful lusts.” The second danger comes out of the “lust of the eye.” This is a peril affecting nobler kinds of men. The eye is one of the most honourable of our senses. The “eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing,” and God is graciously pleased to give us exquisite pleasure in the things on which we may gaze. But the Father made them all, gave them all, speaks by them all to our hearts. St. John, however, says that, for you young men, there is some danger. You are strong; the “lust of the eye” is strong: in passionate satisfying of the senses, even the sense of the beautiful, you may pass by the Father; you may fail to see Him, and find Him; you may be carried away by the love of the world. Your very strength may make you love even the higher pleasures of life for their own sakes; and your soul, with all its noble possibilities, will stop short of God, our only true end. The third danger comes out of the “pride of life”—a still higher kind of peril, connected with our intelligence, our thought, our ambitions, our aspirations. Many a man has fled youthful lusts, has conquered the desire for pleasure through the senses, and then has fallen before this “pride of life.” We know well what is meant by that term. We watch, we envy, those above us in society; we want to have houses such as they have, to be as free with wealth as they are, to be able to enjoy what they enjoy, to take the position in society which they are able to take. And St. John reminds us of our peril. We need to step carefully, and to walk watchfully. The “pride of life” is not wholly wrong; the desire to rise must till every noble breast; it is the feebler sphere of the yearning of our souls for God. But the “pride of life” must be kept in, curbed, moulded, well-possessed, and inspired with higher principle, or it will surely overwhelm us and degrade us. The danger for the young is that they are strong. Fill the “pride of life” with all your youthful strength, and you will surely find it is not “of the Father”; it is “of the world,” and the “world passeth away, and the lust thereof”; only “he who doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Consider—
III. The old man’s counsel for the guidance of the young man’s way.—“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” St. John would say, “Young men, take care of yourselves; consider where your love is set, and what is its object.” Love is always nobler and mightier than lust. Love is the holy, God-like power within us. Lust is the low, grovelling earth-power. Nothing can really conquer lust and pride but love. Then you will be safe, quite safe, if your love is right. The whole life is endangered if the love be wrong. A man always is according as he loves. A man may drive the evil spirit out, and have his house empty, swept, and garnished. But he is not safe until holy love fills the empty house. There is always the danger that the evil spirit may come back to the empty place, and bring with him seven other spirits worse than himself. The sanctifying capacity in us is love. Then “love not the world.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” The love in us can never rest in anything; it must set itself upon a person. Our lust can do with things, but our love cannot. And our love to a person can never fully satisfy itself with any other person than our “Father who is in heaven.” Then let your youthful strength go out in love to God, of whom John Tauler so expressively says, “Rightly is He called the Master of love, for He rewards nothing but love; He rewards only out of love; and He rewards with love.” Love God, and then you shall keep down all lusts, all pride; you shall make such things servants to serve you, not temptations to triumph over you, nor tyrants to enslave you. Love God! What God? Why, “God manifest in the flesh,”—God shadowed to your view in your own humanity, that your eyes may see Him, your ears may hear Him, and your arms twine with a life-clasp about Him,—the God whom St. John loved and lived for; the God whom St. Paul loved, and would have died to honour; the God whom Mary loved, and at whose feet she sat up-looking, with those eyes which Tennyson so exquisitely calls “homes of silent prayer.” Set your hearts upon loving, trusting, following, serving, that brother-man, that manifested God, Jesus Christ. Relying on the man Christ Jesus, you are trusting the God of love. Loving Christ Jesus, on your hearts will be set that love of the Father which alone can keep you, through all the long years, from the love of the world.
1Jn_2:15. The Love of the Father as the Law of Life.—A fragment from Philo declares that “it is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God.” By writing “the love of the Father,” rather than “the love of God,” the apostle points to the duty of Christians as children of God. The “love of the Father” means man’s love to Him, not His to man. “The love of the Father is the true posture of the soul towards God. If the soul is evenly balanced between love of God and of the world, it is negative and colourless. If the balance incline towards the things that distract from the pure and simple walk with God, then the emotion for Him has died away; if the balance be for Him, the expulsive power of the new affection “makes the contrary attractions insignificant and increasingly powerless.” A man must have a “law of life” to be a man at all. Manhood is life under intelligent rule. The law of his life will be the thing which he supremely loves. A man may love the world, which is precisely this—himself projected outside himself, and made a circle round himself. That self will present the entire series of considerations that rules his conduct. Or a man may love the Father; and that is man going out beyond himself, outside his own circle, and living under the most sanctifying rule of love.
1Jn_2:15-17. Worldliness.—Religion differs from morality in the value which it places on the affections. Morality requires that an act be done on principle. Religion goes deeper, and inquires into the state of the heart. In the eye of Christianity he is a Christian who loves the Father. He who loves the world may be in his way a good man, respecting whose eternal destiny we pronounce no opinion; but one of the children of the kingdom he is not. The boundary lines of this love of the world, or worldliness, are exceedingly difficult to define.
I. The nature of the forbidden world.—There are three ways in which we learn to know God:
1. By the working of our minds. Love, justice, tenderness: if we would know what they mean in God, we must gain the conception from their existence in ourselves.
2. By the representation which God has given us of Himself in Christ.
3. The world is but manifested Deity—God shown to eye, and ear, and sense. Then to forbid the love of all this world is to forbid the love of that by which God is known to us. The sounds and sights of this lovely world are but the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible has clothed Himself. By the world is sometimes meant the men that are in the world—as if we could love God the more by loving man the less. This is not St. John’s forbidden world. By the world is often understood the worldly occupation, trade, or profession which a man exercises. It is no uncommon thing to hear this spoken of as something which, if not actually anti-religious, so far as it goes, is time taken away from the religious life. A man’s profession or trade is his religion. And this is true even of those callings which at first sight appear to have in them something hard to reconcile with religiousness, such as that of the lawyer. Worldliness consists in these three things: attachment to the outward; attachment to the transitory; attachment to the unreal, in opposition to love of the inward, the eternal, and the true.
II. The reasons for which the love of the world is forbidden.—
1. It is incompatible with the love of God. St. John takes it for granted that we must love something. Every man must go out of himself for enjoyment.
2. Its transitoriness. It is transitory in itself—the world passeth away. It is transitory in its power of exciting desire—the lust thereof passeth away. Man becomes satiated with the world. There is something in earthly rapture that cloys.
3. The solitary permanence of Christian action. Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts—lasts in you. Distinguish, however, between the act and the actor: it is not the thing done, but the doer who lasts. The thing done often is a failure. Two lessons:
1. Learn from earthly changefulness a lesson of cheerful activity.
2. The love of this world is only unlearned by the love of the Father. It were a desolate thing, indeed, to forbid the love of earth, if there were nothing to fill the vacant space in the heart. But it is just for this purpose, that a sublimer affection may find room, that the lower is to be expelled.—F. W. Robertson.
1Jn_2:16. The Pride of Life.—This is one of the great frailties of humanity in every age, and it gains expression in every class of society. The forms it took in the days of the apostle John, and in the Christian Churches to which he wrote, may be studied, and used to give point to his counsels and warnings. Attention is now fixed on this—that the “pride of life” is a self-toned circle of which the centre is self. The essence of it is self-superiority: it is the Pharisaic “I thank thee that I am not as other men are.” It is pride of the peculiarities that mark our lives off from the lives of others. It may be pride of superior intellect, or superior acquirements, or superior birth, or superior station, or superior tastes. Our differences from others are no moral temptations to us while we regard them as a Divine trust committed to us, as an agency for service to others. “Who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou hast not received?”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1Jn_2:16. Love of Dress.—A forcible instance occurs in Ten Years of a Preacher’s Life. A man following the occupation of wood-cutting wrought with exemplary zeal the six working days, hoarding every cent not required to furnish him with the most frugal fare. As his “pile” increased, he invested it in gold ornaments,—watch-chain of massive links, shirt and sleeve buttons, shoe buckles, then buttons for vest and coat, a hat-band of the precious metal, a heavy gold-headed cane; and, in short, wherever an ounce of it could be bestowed upon his person, in or out of taste, it was done. The glory of his life, his sole ambition, was to don this curious attire, which was deposited for safe keeping during the week in one of the banks, on Sunday morning, and then spend the day, the “observed of all observers,” lounging about the office or bar-room of the St. Charles. He never drank, and rarely spoke. Mystery seemed to envelop him. No one knew whence he came, or the origin of his innocent whim. Old citizens assured you that year after year his narrow savings were measured by the increase of his ornaments, until at length the value of the anomalous garments came to be estimated by thousands of dollars. By ten o’clock on Sunday night the exhibition was closed—his one day of self-gratification enjoyed—his costly wardrobe was returned to the bank vault, and he came back into the obscurity of a wood-chopper.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v12 12. “I write unto you as infants,” i.e., newly…
ARGUMENT 4
SANCTIFICATION AND GROWTH GRACE
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12. “I write unto you as infants,” i.e., newly converted people, the weakest of all Christians.
13. “I write unto you fathers,” i.e., spiritual fathers, soul-savers, who have never backslidden, but would go on into sanctification and still into the higher experiences. “I write unto you young men,” i.e., persons who have advanced out of spiritual infancy, i.e., been sanctified and grown into stalwarts, so that they have conquered the devil. “I write unto you lads and lasses,” i.e., persons intermediate between spiritual infancy and manhood, “because you know the fathers,” i.e., you have passed all the wilderness fogs and smoke and crossed over into Beulah land.
14. John congratulates the fathers in Israel, mighty in wisdom, and the young, i.e., spiritual stalwarts, redoubtable in conflict, because the “Word of God” abides in them, the old men are mighty in the Scriptures and the young men invincible on the battlefield. “You have conquered the wicked one,” i.e., the devil.
15. People in the enjoyment of divine love are here warned not to love the world. It did not mean the material, but the fallen world.
16. “All that which is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, are not of the Father but of this world.” This verse
forever settles the world problem. When the devil conquered the world in Eden, he turned it over to the unholy trinity:
(1) the lust of the flesh, i.e., all carnal appetites;
(2) the lust of the eyes, i.e., the admission of evil through the sense, and
(3) the pride of this life, i.e., ambition, selfish aggrandizement.
These three hellish demons have ruled the world ever since the fall. The Holy Spirit everywhere anathematizes the world, i.e., the unholy trinity of carnal and sensual lust and pride, as utterly and hopelessly irreconcilable to God. Then what is to be done? These lusts are to be utterly consumed with Holy Ghost fire. God’s method with sin is destruction. Rom 6:6. Hagiazoo, to sanctify, is from alpha, not, and gee, the world. Hence it means to take the world out of you, Ecclesia, church, is from ek, out, and kaleo, to call. Hence it means the called, i.e., the souls who have hard the call of the Holy Ghost and came out of the world and separated themselves to God. Oh, how plain and simple is visible truth? You see from these facts regeneration takes you out of the world. Sanctification takes the world out of you. The Church and the world are irreconcilable antipodes. You can not be in both at the same time. The world is Satan’s passport to hell. The Church is God’s balloon to waft you to heaven.
17. “The world passeth away and its lusts; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” The devil’s world, i.e., all the sin in this world, with its effects will be utterly consumed in the fiery baptism destined to come on this world to sanctify it. Meanwhile the renewed and celestialized earth will survive (Rom 11:1), the celestial abode of saints and angels constituting a constituent member of the glorious heavenly universe, through the flight of eternal ages.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v12 Division 2. (1Jn 2:12-27.)
Division 2. (1Jn 2:12-27.)
Growth by the Truth.
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We now come to what is very distinct in character. The being in the light is not in itself a sufficient statement of the believer’s condition. If he is in it, and the light in him, this involves another thing which must be true of him -a life which God has given, and by virtue of which he is a child of God. This is a life which he has received through the gospel. We are begotten by the Word of truth. The Word becomes, as James has said, an "engrafted Word." It has come not as word merely, but in the power of the Spirit, who works in it. We see, therefore, the perfect connection between the life and the light. In Christ it was always perfect. "The life was the light of men." In us there is now, through grace, a life which is light also, the light giving it its character; and its seed, as the apostle speaks afterwards, being the seed of the truth, which abides in the heart in which it has been sown. Growth, therefore, is also by the truth, and that is it to which the apostle now goes on. By the life we are children of a common Father; but then, while it is thus of necessity eternal life, and is divine in character, it may be in us, and will of necessity be, at the beginning, in feebleness and immaturity. Dependent it always is. It does not take us out of the creature place, but rather puts us fully in it, and makes us realize the source of all to be in Him from whom we draw. Christ is the truth. The reception of Christ is the reception of the life which the truth characterizes, and Christ is thus before the eyes of faith as the perfect Example and full Reality of that into which we are daily growing up as we know Him and walk with Him.
1. Here the apostle lays down the fundamental distinction as to all those of whom he is writing now. "I write unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake." This is true of every child of God, and it is as true of any one of these as of any other. There is no child of God who is not forgiven. "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." This is the ground upon which the apostle writes, therefore. He would have no ground for writing if their sins were not forgiven; for it is not a question of the gospel here, that is, of preaching it to those outside, but he writes to those who have received it, and who therefore are forgiven -forgiven for the sake of that blessed Name which is now named upon them. They are forgiven, therefore, in all the grace that the work of Christ for them implies. This, then, is the basis of what he is at present saying. He has already been defining what is true perfection, and separating it from the false. He can now therefore write to those whom this definition has shown to be the true children of God. These have eternal life.
2. But immediately now he recognizes that there are grades and distinctions among these. There are fathers, young men, little children. The word in the last case is a different one from that which we had in the twelfth verse, which applies to all Christians. Here, on the other hand, the "little children" are those in whom life is only beginning to develop itself. The young men are those who have attained or are attaining maturity. The fathers are those that are fully mature in the perfect ripeness of what is implied in Christianity. Notice there are no "old men" here. There is no feebleness or decay hinted at, at all. The life is eternal, and this may and does need development, but in it there is no decline; it is eternal. But the different classes that he is addressing here are named from the evident correspondence to such classes in nature, and there is a certain relationship even between these, which we can easily trace. An old man brought to God, as such, will, of course, be at the same time but a little child in the things of God. Yet even so, he will not be found, probably, to have all the characteristics of little children. This will be more apparent as we proceed. But, as we see here, while the little children already know the Father -they have learnt to look in His face and recognize their relationship to Him -yet the energy of youth does not as yet belong to them. They have not known conflict yet. They have not overcome the wicked one. Yet this is not failure. It is inexperience, necessarily. It characterizes a condition which needs peculiar care, and from which failure may readily come, if God do not avert it. Nevertheless, it is not in itself failure, but very far from this. To know the Father is a wonderful and blessed reality. And the apostle has no idea really of anything lower than this. The cry of "Abba, Father," is the children’s. cry.*
{*The knowledge of the Father is what is distinctive of Christianity, there is no Christianity apart from this; it is what our Lord came to make known, and what the Spirit bears witness to. It includes a knowledge of the dignity of our relationship -membership in the family of God; it reminds us as well of the Father’s love and care, "The Father Himself loveth you;" it also recalls the fact that we are under the Father’s government, therefore the necessity of walking in godly fear and obedience. Thus even the babe knows relationship, divine love, and the claims of such upon his obedience. -S.R.}
The young men have the vigor of life, and have overcome the wicked one; but there is danger for them yet; danger, perhaps, in the very activity which this implies -danger necessarily implied, one may say, in the very fact of conflict, though they have overcome, and are looked at, in the apostle’s style here, necessarily as overcomers. He puts the Christian condition here before us characteristically. He does not bring in the blots and disfigurements, nor the imperfections, though he may warn against them. He is giving us a picture of Christianity, and not of whatever foreign elements may still cleave to the Christian. This is easily to be understood. He would animate us by the realization of what we are, and not draw in what is contrary to this, -even though we may have admitted it, -as if he were going to admit it. We have already seen that he can say, "If any one should sin, we have an Advocate with the Father;" but he does not say, -when we sin, we have an Advocate with the Father. That would be a very different style of speaking; and, instead of being encouragement, would be great discouragement. He writes as to those who have the Spirit of God and know it, and with whom, therefore, the full capacity of full privilege is found, though the young men have, as it were a matter of course, overcome the wicked one. Is not He that is in them greater than he that is in the world? What else must it be than overcoming? Is not this "the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith?" Have they not faith? Here he will have no abatement of this blessedness. He could not, addressing himself to Christians as a whole, or in classes such as this, take in the defect and evil as if it were a matter of course, as if it belonged to His people. It does not belong. The young men that he is addressing, the ideal young men if you like, (but still he does not make mere ideals of them,) have overcome the wicked one.*
{*Strength is what characterizes the young men. "The glory of young men is their strength." There is the vigor needed for the inevitable conflict. As the knowledge of relationship marks the babes, so the practical carrying out of God’s will -and in the circumstances in which we are -marks the young men. -S.R.}
Now, as to the fathers, it is remarkable what he has to say of them. What is it? "Ye have known Him who is from the beginning." What is that more than the little children have known? Have not the little children known Him who is from the beginning -that is, Christ? Yes, they have known Him; and yet how little they have known Him! Knowledge it is, wonderful, blessed knowledge -knowledge which distinguishes them from all the world around; and yet who that in fact knows Christ will account his knowledge of Him to be, as it were, anything? As we have seen in the opening of the epistle, the apostle will say for himself and others who had the inestimable blessing of being with Him upon earth -he will say, rather "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen, of the Word of life." They have seen somewhat of Him. How great a mystery of blessing lies beyond! Not that they are debarred from anything; not that they have it put at a distance in any wise; quite the contrary. They are invited and drawn near by the very fulness of the revelation itself. We have seen how he continually, as it were, draws nearer in those opening words, "We have heard," "seen," "handled." Yet it is, after all, only somewhat of this divine Person, this Son who in His fulness the Father only knows. Yet he can say of these Christian fathers, "Ye have known Him who is from the beginning." Here he will not say "that which is from the beginning" exactly. He does not want to qualify it in this way. In one relation it may be qualified, but here he is speaking of a Person whom they know, who is the real Person upon whom their eyes have been fixed ever since they were drawn to Him by His grace and made His own. He is speaking of One in the knowledge of whom they have grown up to where they are now, and their growth is by that which they have learnt more and more of Him. They have been in His company; they have listened to His words; they have heard told out the very thoughts of His heart; they have learnt to look at all things with His eyes. They have now, as fathers, as it were proved for themselves that world, which, for the young men even, had necessarily been much of an untried world. Though they could speak of it as Scripture had declared it, yet they could not speak of it exactly as knowing it in experience yet. They had not yet tested all things in the presence of Christ. The fathers have done this, and the world has shriveled up for them into the vanity which belongs to it, and the One that abides is Christ, and only Christ. Thus, to have known Him is to have known all. It is not that they will not know Him better, but that they have got now before them (impossible to be confounded with anything else), they have got One who has given rest and satisfaction to their hearts, in whom they have found indeed "all things that pertain to life and godliness," and in such a way that there they abide, "rooted and built up in Him." There is plenty to be learnt yet, as has already been said; but as, for us all, the discernment between good and evil is that which is counted knowledge, so the discernment between Christ and all else is the fathers’ knowledge here.* Thus, then, we have the three classes before us. He is going to address himself now to each.
{*To know Christ -the eternal Son -there is nothing beyond that, and it is far, far beyond all knowledge of relationship and all power for warfare. It was for this that Paul was ever pressing on -"that I may know Him." We can well understand the place the fathers would have in the assembly of God. No vigor can supply the lack of that judgment, that poise of soul which comes alone from a knowledge of Christ. -S.R.}
3. But it is very striking, as soon as he begins to address himself to the fathers, as we saw first, he has no more to say to them than he had said already. How strange that seems at the first thought of it! They have got Him before them who is the fulness of knowledge, and they have got Him before them in such a way that nothing else can possibly be confounded with Him at all. This is what suits the apostle, as it were. He has nothing further in this way to say to them. With them the value of the teacher has been realized in such a measure as to make them, we may say, independent of the teacher. He seems to say this even of the little children afterwards, but not in the same way as he can say it here. The office of a teacher is, in fact, always to make people more and more independent of himself. What teacher is there, that is worth anything as that, who will not aim to accomplish this? Who is going to keep others always in school to himself? What is school for but to enable them to go out from it and to live their independent lives apart? Alas, when we think of this, and look around us! Plenty there are who undervalue teaching. Fathers will not do that. Plenty there are who think that they can draw for themselves independently, as it were, from the divine Source, and be in debt to no man. They are not fathers ever who admit this. Fathers have learnt the use of teaching, and of teachers; but they have learnt, as it was surely the only right thing for them to do, that which, as already said, brings them more and more out of the school in which they have learnt it. That does not mean, of course, the school of God, in which we all are, but the school of the teacher; even when the teacher is most thoroughly such, and used of God as such. How blessed to see this kind of independence beginning in the soul! In fact, as we shall shortly see, there must be a character of this even from the beginning. But here is the full maturity of such a character. Here are those who have so learnt Christ, and are so in His company, that while they still learn, as we all do, perhaps from the very mouth of a babe, yet at the same time are not in the same sense scholars as once they were. They "have known Him that is from the beginning." How sweet it is indeed to know Him so! How blessed if we can see characteristics of this sort developing amongst us in the independent life and walk of those who are made so just by their recognition of their absolute dependence upon Christ, upon all the fulness of God manifested in Him into which they are daily drinking! "Rooted and built up in Him," they are "stablished in the faith, . . . abounding therein with thanksgiving."
The young men are now addressed as before, as in the energy of youth, those who have already overcome the wicked one. This is what the little children have yet to do. They have to discern antichrist, the falsehood from the truth; but with those here, the word of God, the first necessity for doing this, abides in them. They have fought in this respect their battle, and come through. Thus they are strong as nourished by the Word, for it is "the food of the mighty" still; it is that which gives strength.
But he has more now to say to them, and his exhortation has to do with that in which, after all, they are not yet experienced, in which their new experience has to be, and into which their very energy will necessarily lead them. The young men, naturally, are those who are going out into the world. Life in this sense is beginning with them. Their necessary occupation is in it. They cannot refuse, therefore, the having to do with it. But in this world, opposed as it is to Christ, there is yet that which, alas, is capable of attracting the heart, even of a disciple. The life which he is beginning has in itself its own attractiveness. He can be in it for Christ, and is to be. Sanctified by Him and taken out of it, we are sent into it just as those sanctified; but conflict is implied in this, and the stratagem of him who is the prince of it, and who can display all its glory still for the disciple, as he did of old for the disciple’s Master. The evils that are in the world, by daily contact with them, grow familiar, have a natural tendency to impress us less. We are in it at any rate; have, as it were, to make the best of it. The daily wear and tear of things begins; we are not in the retirement of the family; we are away from home, more or less single and independent in our lives now, exposed thus to varied influences in which the eye may readily affect the heart, and having also in the heart that which can be attracted still by that which has overcome so many strong men already.
Here is the ground of the apostle’s exhortation, then. "Love not the world," he says, "nor the things in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Strong, separative words for those who have but a while since come to know the Father, and who have been growing in the knowledge of the intimacy which this implies! What a thing for the young man entering the world, the remembrance of that home upon which now his back is more or less necessarily turned! The apostle would encompass those spiritually young with these affections of One who, blessed be His name, is with us still, from whose presence we are not to go, whose love has sought us and abides with us.
But the love of the world is inconsistent with the love of the Father. There is no element in it which is of Him. It is the great, imposing system which, for all the show it makes, has grown out just of its alienation from God. The things that are in it are "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." These characterize it, -a heart away from God which finds no longer its satisfaction in Him, -seeks it no more there, and as a consequence has to make its riches just of the things that are in its hands, with nothing beyond; the things that pamper fleshly instincts; the things that raise question and incite to how many paths of knowledge in a scene which has so many mysteries for us. There follows with this "the pride of life," the realization of man’s place over the world, which, indeed, was given him of God from the beginning, but which he is all the less enjoying when he seems most conscious of it. It is not hard to understand the development here, in days when the desire of knowledge is so great with us, and the sense of acquirement so strong. In all this, the things that attract us have a certain natural and necessary interest. God did not put us here amid the wonders of His own creation without meaning them to be something to us, and He has, indeed, provided in His own Word that which stimulates question, and of a deeper character than mere nature in itself could raise. He has provided in it also the answer to these questions in a way we very little realize, and, if we turned to Him with them, how should we find what, even naturally, our heritage is! But men seek it away from God. They go into it to make it a substitute for Himself. They receive it not from Him, but from the one into whose hands it has fallen through their sin, and into whose hands they have fallen. Thus the most innocent delight can in this way draw the soul away from God. While the gifts are valued, they are not valued as His gifts, nor Himself trusted in. The gifts draw from the Giver.*
{*We have three most important definitions in this brief epistle -of God, of sin, and here of the world. God is light and love; sin is lawlessness; and the lust of the world is described in the threefold way -the lust of the flesh, of the eyes, and the pride of life. The application of this to the temptation of the woman in Eden has often been noticed. She saw that the tree was "good for food;" this answers to the lust of the flesh, those more animal and sensual appetites, which would include the grosser lusts which have degraded the race. The tree was also pleasant to the eyes, answering to the lust of the eyes, that craving of an empty heart which has turned from God, and seeks in vain to fill itself by "the things that are seen." How Satan has used the tinsel of this gaudy world to stir up lust -for riches, position, power -in his captives. But it was also "a tree to be desired to make one wise," and the pride of man has ever asserted itself in claiming wisdom for itself. This sin was that of Satan, and is far more subtle than the grosser forms of the world previously spoken of. What a blessed remedy for worldliness is suggested in the words "of the Father." Where He and His love, and obedience to Him control the life, the world can have little power. -S.R.}
This, as we know, began in Eden itself, where God had specially provided all that was pleasant to the sight and good for food, and destined all that He had created beneath man to subjection to him and to minister to his enjoyment. God is not the enemy of joy. It is away from Him that we have learned to think of Him so, and the effect of the tree of knowledge of good and evil has been thus made to turn our eyes away from the tree of life. This spirit intensifies as it grows, as the world becomes larger, as the material accumulates, as men incite one another more and more in the paths that they have chosen for themselves. They learn to rejoice in their independence of God. That will which is the highest influence in man must be for them a free will, setting to work after its own fashion, with methods of its own, apart from God; a course which at the beginning brought death into it, the shadow of which must necessarily, therefore, lie across it all. But for man this shadow is over the face of God Himself. The evil in the world he resents as from a malevolent being envying his joys, and the spirit that turns from Him becomes naturally evermore defiant of Him. Upon all this, however, death must pass; and it does pass. The commonest and most familiar thing with us now is death. "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof;" and where faith does not exist, there is no knowledge of a path upon which the shadows do not lie. Yet "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
But how should man be brought to believe this? Christ has been here upon earth, the Pattern of it; one whose very words were spirit and life, one Himself in the joy of the Father, and therefore at whose touch death itself passed. The life in Him was eternal life. The Son of God, from the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, was in the world to turn men back to Him from whom they have wandered. What have they done with Him? Why has not this gracious Presence remained with us? The cross was man’s answer to the Father’s grace, and the world remains of necessity in the death that it has chosen, and with the brand upon it that it has rejected the Father’s Son. Plain all this is, indeed, to one who has received the truth which God is proclaiming. How can the world have power any more over him who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? How can there be any more anything to glory in, save in that cross by which the world is crucified to us and we unto the world? And yet what a struggle to go through the world unreduced by it! Here is what indeed requires all the energy of the young man in Christ, with all his soul awake, and everything around him full of fresh interest -as, in a sense, it ought to be. God has provided for all this energy. He has provided for us that which, as we occupy ourselves with it, more and more satisfies, even while begetting fresh desire in the soul; and here in occupation with our own things, while in a world, too, which, when we learn it rightly, belongs to us, for its true use with God; for "all is yours," says the apostle, "whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come." What a mastery over all is here set before us to be ours if we so will, but which, as we realize it, instead of lifting the heart up with pride, will more and more teach it dependence and the joy of being with and under the omnipotent eye of God, who is for us with all that He is, and only eager to put us in possession of that which is our own. God give His young men to accept this place, and find the true field for deathless energies, which abide in the eternal life which He has given them.
The apostle turns once more now to the little children, and, strangely as at first sight it would seem, addresses them as to antichrist. Who would think of that as a topic for the babe? But it is not just with prophetical questions that he would occupy them here. What is antichrist? It is in essence all that is opposed to Christ; all that would substitute itself for Him. "I have come in My Father’s name," says the Lord, "and ye receive Me not. If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." If Christ be rejected, antichrist must come. If Christ does not satisfy the soul, antichrist will press his claim upon it; and here, in fact, even doctrinally in the history of the Church, was the first and long struggle of faith. All forms of antichrist were abroad, as John says here: "Even now there are many antichrists." Conflict as to the person of Christ began in the very first days. We look back at it now, perhaps, to wonder at all the many questions which arose about the glorious person of the Son of God. We wonder at the subtleties which grew out of these, and are disposed to put much of it down as the mere curious questioning of minds that were but too little occupied with the One they questioned of; but underneath it all there lay surely that which was of fundamental interest to every soul taught of God. If the knowledge of Christ constitutes Christians, then must the enemy seek to pervert the truth of Christ in every way which devilish wisdom could suggest.
The little children are in this way peculiarly open to attack. The word of God has become a new and wonderful enjoyment to them, but they are yet largely ignorant of it, and are only beginning to know Christ, "whom to know is" indeed "life eternal." Here is the secret of the form which the enemy’s attack takes. If he can now get, in some way, the very truth of Christ away from them, then the whole victory is won without any question. In that early Church, which doubtless we often misconceive as to its intelligence, as in other ways, there was not yet that intimate acquaintance with the word of God upon which so much depended. As we know, it was not in their hands as it is in our hands today. Men might obtain laboriously a copy of a Gospel, or some other book written out by their own hands, perhaps, in order to secure it, and the Scriptures did not multiply as even in this form we might expect they would. How everything fails with us through lack of the intense desire with which our hearts should go after things like these! Now, when Scripture is in all our houses and in all our hands, how much acquaintance, after all, have we with it? How many terrible gaps are there in our knowledge? Has our familiarity with it brought all this about? Has it brought contempt, or what? Alas, how our unused Bibles cry out against us! Do they not cry into the ear of God? Must He not take note of them? And all the various forms of evil that are abroad today, do they not show how still, for masses, the infancy of things has never passed?
We must not look back to those so-called primitive times expecting to find how entirely different things were then with them. Every epistle that we have is witness that they were not different. At Rome, amongst those Roman Christians whom the apostle had so long been desiring to see, whose faith had come abroad so much, -when he actually got there, what was his account? "All seek their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ’s." In Ephesus, where he had been so long, so that almost all Asia heard the word of God from him at that time, how earnestly he warns them of the decay which was already creeping in! And in all this men found their opportunity to sow, in this ground so little occupied with the true seed of blessing, seed of their own (which was, after all, the enemy’s sowing), and to have plentiful crops within the very harvest-field of Christendom. The world had hardly woke up with astonishment to find itself Christian, when it woke up once more to find itself Arian. Christ was almost slipping away, and the Nicene Creed, with the Athanasian, are witnesses to us of the necessary conflict by which, under God, the truth was in measure saved. But the apostle’s interest here is, as ours must ever mainly be, with individual souls, and with conditions out of which these things arose, and still arise.
Nor must we expect any bettering. The many antichrists proved for an apostle only that it was the "last hour." It was a departure from the truth once held -a departure which, as that, did not imply mere ignorance, but rejection. "They went out from us," says the apostle, "but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us." The doubt in this last statement implied in the common version does not really exist. The apostle does not say, "that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us." In the nature of things, that would be a contradiction. How could their going out make manifest with regard to some what it did not make manifest with regard to others? The form of speech here is merely a common form of Greek expression. "Except those days were shortened, no flesh should be saved;" but the Greek literally says: "all flesh should not be saved." Here it is plain that the going out makes manifest the same thing as to all that go out. It could not make manifest as to some what it did not make manifest as to others; and "if they had been of us," says the apostle, "they would have remained with us." He that is in Christ abides in Christ, thank God. He that is in the light abideth in the light. The apostle has no thought of the divine work in the soul being ever undone again, or that He that has begun a good work in any could fail to carry it on; but a mixed condition, such as obtains in Christendom, (such as, indeed, early obtained,) makes itself plain in this way; and through this the power of the enemy works; the antichrists are found amongst those who, not being of us, fall from the truth into the more attractive error.
But the apostle returns here to the comforting assurance of how amply God has provided even for His babes, in view of such things as these. It is to the little children that he says: "But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things." Strange that may seem at first; yet he manifestly does not mean that they have anything like perfect knowledge, but that in this anointing from the Holy One, in the power of the Spirit who abode in them, they had really the capacity for the judgment of all such things as might be presented to them. In this character, as led of Him, they knew the truth. They had but to be subject to One abiding in them, who searched even the deep things of God. He had not written unto them, then, because they did not know the truth, and as if they were now to take, so to speak, his bare word for it. No, they knew it, and that no lie was of the truth. These things never really intermingled -the lie and the truth. Men may indeed seek to mix them together, and for those who are not of the truth themselves the imposition may stand; but God does not leave His people to the imperfection natural to them, and there is not one lie that they have any need of accepting along with truth, which they cannot distinguish from it. Moreover, the spirit of falsehood naturally tends to come out in its true character. It may hide itself in sophistry at the beginning, but the power of the enemy more and more is seen in the opposition to Christ. In the Jewish form it may deny that Jesus is the Christ; in the Christian form it will deny the Father and the Son. The great Antichrist in whom the full reality of these tendencies will appear will join the Jewish denial of Jesus being Christ with the antichristian denial of the Father and the Son; and here the point of controversy is always Christ Himself. Men may, after a sort, as we well know, own the Father when they deny the Son. In our own day, "the universal Father" is held prominently by those who, in fact, deny the Son. But the apostle tells us that those who deny the Son have not the Father either; and that, on the other hand, "he who confesseth the Son hath the Father also." How can one truly confess the Son without confessing the Father? But the Father only -whose Father may He be? Yours and mine, of sinner or saint alike! The most emphatic affirmation of the Father, therefore, may go with the most perfect denial of the Son; but the apostle warns us against any possible deception here. All this is merely Satan’s substitute for truth, not the truth; with all its large liberality and plausibility. The very One in whom, as we recognize Him, we see God manifest in the fullest way is denied by it. Christ Himself is the central point of controversy, and he who confesseth the Son must surely accept the Father.
So that again he carries us back to what was heard "from the beginning." The time when that blessed Voice had first been heard amongst men was indeed a beginning, such a beginning as made it seem that there was none before. We are to expect no developments beyond this, whatever glories may develop in it. We have but to abide in that which He Himself has uttered; and what He has uttered, He is. He is the essential truth of His own words. If, then, that which we have heard from the beginning abide in us, we too shall abide "in the Son and in the Father." Along with this, to ourselves comes this immense blessedness; the promise that He hath promised us is eternal life; a promise, because in its full manifestation it is still before us. In us, as it is, it is yet to develop itself in such a way as alone will show all its power and value. All that it has proved itself already to be to us is yet only the anticipation and the earnest of the eternal blessing. Thus, in the energy of hope we are to go on, pressing on, indeed, to enjoy more and more that which we enjoy already, and kept in the light which is thus ever brightening, far from the paths of those who already, even in the apostle’s time, were leading men astray. He reiterates the comfort here that that anointing which we have received of Him abideth in us, and we need not that any one should teach us. We are not disciples of this or that man, but of Christ! The truth which we rejoice in as it is ministered to us comes to us authenticated not by that which is the mere channel of it, but by Him who alone certifies divinely to the soul in the power of this same anointing, teaching us as to all things, and which is truth, and with no mixture of falsehood whatever in it. Even as it hath taught us, we shall abide in Him.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v14 1 John
1 John
YOUTHFUL STRENGTH
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1Jn 2:14.
‘What am I going to be?’ is the question that presses upon young people stepping out of the irresponsibilities of childhood into youth. But, unfortunately, the question is generally supposed to be answered when they have fixed upon a trade or profession. It means, rightly taken, a great deal more than that. ‘What am I going to make of myself?’ ‘What ideal have I before me, towards which I constantly press?’ is a question that I would fain lay upon the hearts of all that now hear me. For the misery and the reason of the failure of so many lives is simply that people have never fairly looked that question in the face and tried to answer it, but drift and drift, and let circumstances determine them. And, of course, in a world like this, such people are sure to turn out what such an immense number of people do turn out, failures as far as all God’s purposes with humanity are concerned. The absence of a clear ideal is the misery and the loss of all young people who do not possess it.
So here in my text is an old man’s notion of what young men ought to be and may be. ‘Ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.’
So said the aged John to some amongst his hearers in these corrupt Asiatic cities. It was not merely a fair ideal painted upon vacancy, but it was a portrait of actual young Christians in these little Asiatic churches. And I would fain have some of you take this realised ideal for yours and see to it that your lives be conformed to it.
There are three points here. The Apostle, first of all, lays his finger upon the strength, which is something more than mere physical strength, proper to youth. Then he lets us see the secret source of that strength: ‘Ye have the word of God abiding in you.’ And then he shows the field on which it should be exercised, and the victory which it secures: ‘And ye have overcome the wicked one.’ Now let me touch upon these three points briefly in succession.
I. First, then, note here the strength which you young people ought to covet and to aim at.
It is not merely the physical strength proper to their age, nor the mere unworn buoyancy and vigour which sorrows and care and responsibilities have not thinned and weakened. These are great and precious gifts. We never know how precious they are until they have slipped away from us. These are great and precious gifts, to be preserved as long as may be, by purity and by moderation, and to be used for high and great purposes. But the strength that is in thews and muscles is not the strength that the Apostle is speaking about here, nor anything that belongs simply to the natural stage of your development, whether it be purely physical or purely mental. Samson was a far weaker man than the poor little Jew ‘whose bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible,’ and who all his days carried about with him that ‘thorn in the flesh.’ It is not your body that is to be strong, but yourselves.
Now the foundation of all true strength lies here, in a good, strong will. In this world, unless a man has learned to say ‘No!’ and to say it very decidedly, and to stick to it, he will never come to any good. Two words contain the secret of noble life: ‘Resist!’ and ‘Persist!’ And the true strength of manhood lies in this mainly, that, in spite of all antagonisms, hindrances, voices, and things that array themselves against you, having greatly resolved, you do greatly do what you have resolved, and having said ‘I will!’ let neither men nor devils lead you to say, ‘I will not.’ Depend upon it, that to be weak in this direction is to be weak all through. Strong passions make weak men. And a strong will is the foundation, in this wicked and antagonistic world in which we live, of all real strength.
But then the strength that I would have you seek, and strive to cultivate, must be a strength of will founded upon strong reason. Determination unenlightened is obstinacy, and obstinacy is weakness. A mule can beat you at that: ‘Be ye not as the mule, which have no understanding.’ A determination which does not take into its view all the facts of the case, nor is influenced by these, has no right to call itself strength. It is only, to quote a modern saying--I know not whether true of the person to whom it was originally applied or no--is ‘only a lath painted to look like iron.’ Unintelligent obstinacy is folly, like the conduct of some man who sticks to his pick and his task in a quarry after the bugle has warned him of an impending explosion, which will blow him to atoms.
But that is not all. A strong will, illuminated by a strong beam of light from the understanding, must be guided and governed by a strong hand put forth by Conscience. ‘I should like’ is the weakling’s motto. ‘I will’ may be an obstinate fool’s motto. ‘I ought, therefore, God helping me, and though the devil hinders me, I will,’ is a man’s. Conscience is king. To obey it is to be free; to neglect it is to be a slave.
Is not this a better ideal for life than gathering any outward possessions, however you may succeed therein? A thousand things will have to be taken into account, and may help or may hinder outward prosperity and success. But nobody can hinder you working at your character and succeeding in making it what it ought to be; and to form character is the end of life. ‘To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering.’ Ay! that is true, though Milton put it into the devil’s mouth. And there is only one strength that will last, ‘for even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail.’ But the strength of a fixed and illuminated and conscience-guided will, which governs the man and is governed by God, shall never faint or grow weak. This is the strength which we should seek, and which I ask you to make the conscious aim of your lives.
II. Now note, secondly, how to get it.
‘Ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.’ Those young Asiatic Christians, that John had in his eye, had learned the secret and the conditions of this strength; and not only in limb and sinew, or in springy and elastic buoyancy of youthful, mental, and spiritual vigour were they strong, but they were so because ‘the Word of God abode in them.’ Now, there are two significations of that great expression, both of them frequent in John’s Gospel, and both of them, I think, transferred to this Epistle, each of which may yield us a word of counsel. By ‘the Word of God,’ as I take it, is meant--perhaps I ought to say both, but, at all events, either--the revelation of God’s truth in Holy Scripture, or the personal revelation of the will and nature of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Whichever of these two meanings--and at bottom they come to be one--we attach to this expression, we draw from them an exhortation. Let me put this very briefly.
Let me say to you, then, if you want to be strong, let Scripture truth occupy and fill and be always present to your mind. There are powers to rule and to direct all conduct, motive powers of the strongest character in these great truths of God’s revelation. They are meant to influence a man in all his doings, and it is for us to bring the greatest and solemnest of them to bear on the smallest things of our daily life. Suppose, now, that you go to your work, and some little difficulty starts up in your path, or some trivial annoyance ruffles your temper, or some lurking temptation is suddenly sprung upon you. Suppose your mind and heart were saturated with God’s truth, with the great thoughts of His being, of His love, of His righteousness, of Christ’s death for you, of Christ’s presence with you, of Christ’s guardianship over you, of Christ’s present will that you should walk in His ways, of the bright hopes of the future, and the solemn vision of that great White Throne and the retribution that streams thence, do you think it would be possible for you to fall into sin, to yield to temptation, to be annoyed by any irritation or bother, or overweighted by any duty? No! Whosoever lives with the thoughts that God has given us in His Word familiar to His mind and within easy reach of His hand, has therein an armlet against all possible temptation, a test that will unveil the hidden corruption in the sweetest seductions, and a calming power that will keep his heart still and collected in the midst of agitations. If the Word of God in that lower sense of the principles involved in the gospel of Jesus Christ, dwell in your hearts, the fangs are taken out of the serpent. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you, and you will ‘be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.’
Bring the greatest truths you can find to bear on the smallest duties, and the small duties will grow great to match the principles by which they are done. Bring the laws of Jesus Christ down to the little things, for, in the name of common sense, if our religion is not meant to regulate trifles, what is it meant to regulate? Life is made up of trifles. There are half a dozen crises in the course of your life, but there are a thousand trivial things in the course of every day. It would be a poor kind of regulating principle that controlled the crises, and left us alone to manage with the trifles the best way we could.
But in order that there shall be this continual operation of the motives and principles involved in the gospel upon our daily lives, we must have them very near our hand, ready to be laid hold of. The soldier that would march through an enemy’s country, having left his gun in the hands of some camp follower, would be very likely to be shot before he got his gun. I remember going through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed places, and the ponderous anchors are loosened and ready to be dropped in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us like a strong man armed. You must have them familiar to you by devout meditation, by frequent reflection, prayer, study of God’s Word, if they are to be of any use to you at all. And I am afraid that about the last book in the world that loads of young men and women think of sitting down to read, systematically and connectedly, is the Bible. You will read sermons and other religious books; you will read newspapers, pamphlets, novels; but the Scripture, in its entirety, is a strange book to myriads of men who call themselves Christians. And so they are weak. If you want to be strong, ‘let the Word of God abide in your hearts.’
And then if we take the other view, which at bottom is not another, of the meaning of this phrase, and apply it rather to the personal word, Jesus Christ Himself, that will yield us another exhortation, and that is, let Jesus Christ into your hearts and keep Him there, and He will make you strong. I believe that it is no piece of metaphor or an exaggerated way of putting the continuance of the influence of Christ’s example and Christ’s teaching upon men’s hearts and minds, when He tells us that ‘if any man open the door He will come in and sup with him.’ I want to urge the one thought on you that it is possible, in simple literal fact, for that Divine Saviour, who was ‘in Heaven’ whilst He walked on earth, and walks on earth to-day when He has returned to His native Heaven, to enter into my spirit and yours, and really to abide within us, the life of our lives, ‘the strength of our hearts, and our portion for ever.’ The rest of us can render help to one another by strength ministered from without; Jesus Christ will come into your hearts, if you let Him, in His very sweetness and omnipotence of power, and will breathe His own grace into your weakness, strengthening you as from within. Others can help you from without, as you put an iron band round some over-weighted, crumbling brick pillar in order to prevent it from collapsing, but He will pass into us as you may drive an iron rod up through the centre of the column, and make it strong inside, and we shall be strong if Jesus Christ dwells within us. Open the door, dear young friends; let Christ come into your hearts, which He will do if you do not hinder Him, and if you ask Him. Trust Him with simple reliance upon Him for everything. Faith is ‘the door’; the door is nothing of itself, but when it is opened it admits the guest. So do you let that Master come and abide, and you will hear Him say to you, as He said of old, ‘Child! My grace is sufficient.’ How modest He is. Sufficient!--an ocean enough to fill a thimble! ‘My grace is sufficient for thee; and My strength is made perfect in weakness.’
III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be exercised, and the victory which it secures. ‘Ye have overcome the wicked one.’
There is a battle for us all, on which I need not dwell, the conflict with evil around and with evil within, and with the prince of the embattled legions of the darkness, whom the New Testament has more clearly revealed to us. You young people have many advantages in the conflict; you have some special disadvantages as well. You have strong passions, you have not much experience, you do not know how bitter the dregs are of the cup whose foaming bubbles look so attractive, and whose upper inch tastes so sweet. But on the other hand you have not yet contracted habits that it is misery to indulge in, and, as it would seem, impossible to break, and the world is yet before you.
You cannot begin too soon to choose your side. And here is the side on which alone victory is possible for a man--the side of Jesus Christ, who will teach your hands to war and your fingers to fight.
Notice that remarkable phrase, ‘Ye have overcome the wicked one.’ He is talking to young Christians before whom the battle may seem to lie, and yet He speaks of their conquest as an accomplished fact, and as a thing behind them. What does that mean? It means this, that if you will take service in Christ’s army, and by His grace resolve to be His faithful soldier till your life’s end, that act of faith, which enrols you as His, is itself the victory which guarantees, if it be continued, the whole conquest in time.
There used to be an old superstition that--
‘Who sheds the foremost foeman’s life
His party conquers in the strife’;
and whosoever has exercised, however imperfectly and feebly, the faith in Jesus Christ the Lord has therein conquered the devil and all his works, and Satan is henceforth a beaten Satan, and the battle, in essence, is completed even in the act of its being begun.
‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’; not only because our confidence in Jesus Christ is the blowing of the bugle that summons to warfare and shakes off the tyrant’s yoke, but it is also the means by which we join ourselves to Him who has overcome, and make His victory ours. He has fought our antagonist in the wilderness once, in Gethsemane twice, on the Cross thrice; and the perfect conquest in which Jesus bound the strong man and spoiled his goods may become, and will become, your conquest, if you wed yourselves to that dear Lord by simple faith in Him.
What a priceless thing it is that you may begin your independent manhood with a conquest that will draw after it ultimate and supreme victory. You will still have to fight, but you will have only to fight detachments. If you trust yourselves to Jesus Christ you have conquered the main body of the army, and it is only the stragglers that you will have to contend with hereafter. He that loves Jesus, and has given himself to Him, has pinned the dragon to the ground by its head, and though it may ‘swinge the scaly horror of its folded tail,’ and twine its loathly coils around him, yet he has conquered, and he is conquering, and he will conquer. Only let him hold fast by the hand which brings strength into him by its touch.
Will you, dear young friends, take service in this army? Do you want to be weak or strong? Do you want your lives to be victorious whatever may happen to them in the way of outward prosperity or failure? Then give yourselves to this Lord. His voice calls you to be His soldiers. He will cover your heads in the day of battle. He will strengthen you ‘with might by His Spirit in the inner man.’ He will hide His Word in your heart that you offend not against Him. He will dwell Himself within you to make you strong in your extremest weakness and victorious over your mightiest foe; and in that sign you will conquer and ‘be more than conquerors through Him that loved you.’
Oh, I pray that you may ask yourselves the question, ‘What am I going to be?’ and may answer it, ‘I am going to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might’; and to overcome, as He also hath overcome, the world and the flesh and the devil.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 15 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv12, 15 An appeal to young and old:
An appeal to young and old:
v. 12. I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.
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v. 13. I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the Wicked One. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father.
v. 14. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the Wicked One.
The apostle is about to insert an earnest warning against the temptations and perils of the love of the world. It is by way of introduction to this warning that he reminds the Christians of various ages of their station and the duty which they owe themselves: I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake. It is the affectionate tone and address of the spiritual father addressing such as were united with him in the fellowship of Christian love. His appeal rests upon their having been made partakers of God’s most wonderful gift, the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s name. It is because Christ obtained a perfect satisfaction for the sins of all mankind, because He took upon Himself both their guilt and their penalty and reconciled God to the whole world, that we are united with the Father in that wonderful mystical union which makes it self-evident for us to walk in the ways of His will.
St. John now distinguishes between the various classes of Christians to whom he is writing: I am writing to you, fathers, because you have known Him who was from the beginning; I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the Wicked One. To the fathers, to the older Christians, John is addressing himself, because they have learned to know and to put their trust in Him who was from the beginning, namely, in the eternal Son of God, because their faith rests in Him as their Lord and Savior. To the younger Christians he says that he is making this appeal to them because they have already renounced and overcome the Evil One, the devil, with all his temptations to evil. Though the battle is still continuing, the believers always have the advantage over the wiles and tricks of Satan, they are able effectually to check all his advances.
This point is so important that the apostle varies his appeal: I have written to you, children, because you have known the Father; I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him that is from the beginning; I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the Evil One. Here also the word children is to indicate the intimate relationship which obtained between the readers of this letter and the writer, but still more between the Christians and their heavenly Father. For he writes that they have known the Father, they have learned to believe that He is their Father for the sake of Christ, they are united with Him by such fellowship of faith. The fathers, the older Christians, should never forget that they have the proper understanding of the person and office of Christ, as of the eternal Son of God who came into this world to become the Savior of all mankind. And the younger men, whose victorious fight against the devil the apostle has just mentioned, are never to lose sight of the fact that their strength is not from themselves, but is imparted to them by the Word of God. It is through the Gospel that the Holy Ghost gives us the power to withstand all the attacks of the devil and to remain victorious unto the end. Thus St. John reminds us of the blessings which we enjoy in our station as Christians, of the glory which is ours in this relationship to God, in order to work and confirm in us the unwavering resolution to be true to Christ and not let anyone take our crown.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12, 15 General Information:
General Information:
John explains why he is writing his letter either to different age groups or to believers with differences in maturity. Try to use similar wording for these sentences, as they are written poetically.
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you, dear children
John was an elderly man and their leader. He used this expression to show his love for them. See how you translated this in 1 John 2:1. AT: "you, my dear children in Christ" or "you who are as dear to me as my own children" (See: Metaphor)
your sins are forgiven
This can be stated in active form. AT: "God forgives your sins" (See: Active or Passive)
because of his name
"his name" refers to Christ and who he is. AT: "because of what Christ has done for you" (See: Metonymy)
I am writing to you, fathers
The word "fathers" here is possibly a metaphor referring to mature believers. AT: "I am writing to you, mature believers" (See: Metaphor)
you know
"you have a relationship with"
the one who is from the beginning
"the one who has always lived" or "the one who has always existed." It refers either to "Jesus" or to "God the Father."
young men
This possibly refers to those who are no longer new believers but are growing in spiritual maturity. AT: "young believers" (See: Metaphor)
you are strong
Here "strong" refers not to believers' physical strength, but to their faithfulness to Christ. (See: Metaphor)
the word of God remains in you
"Word of God" here is a metonym for the message from God. The writer refers to the believers' increased faithfulness to Christ and knowledge of him as if he were speaking of God's word existing in them. AT: "God's message continues to teach you" or "you know the word of God" (See: Metaphor and Metonymy)
overcome
The writer is speaking of the believers' refusal to follow Satan and of their frustrating his plans as if it were a matter of conquering him. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
children
sin
forgive
Satan
God the Father
ancestor
word of God
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12, 15 2:12-14 John gives three classes of believers at various…
2:12-14 John gives three classes of believers at various stages of spiritual maturity: God’s children, the young in the faith (literally young people), and the mature in the faith (literally fathers).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.